"WOMEN I N G E R M A N S O C I E T Y ,

1930 -1940"

by

A. Jill R. Stephenson, M.A.

Thesis submitted for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Edinburgh

1974
 I declare that the content of this thesis is my own,

original work.
 SUMMARY

The aim of this thesis is to describe and discuss some aspects

of the status of, and opportunities for, women in Germany in the

years between the impact on Germany of the world economic crisis,

which followed on the Wall Street crash in October 1929, and the

early years of the Second World War, when the German army was still

victorious and the Nazi regime was attempting to wage war with

only a partial war economy. The significance of the year 1933,

with the Nazi takeover of power, in this decade is inescapable; but

it is increasingly clear that many of the political, economic and

social policies pursued by the Nazis when in Government were

pre -figured in developments conceived and even set in train in the last

years of the Weimar Republic, often as a direct result of the

depression and its effects. The most serious of these, the massive

unemployment in Germany in the early 1930s, did much to condition

attitudes to the position of women, particularly with regard to their

employment - in manual and professional occupations alike - outside

the home. Nazi ideology indeed affected policies concerning women,

but it was conveniently in tune with the needs and the mood of the

time; thus, for a short time Nazi ideology seemed to have practical

application, in providing justification for the provision of jobs for

men at the expense of women. This situation rapidly changed, as full

employment was achieved, and a shortage of labour became Germany's

problem in the later 1930s, particularly once war broke out in

September 1939. Then, a conflict developed between the Party

ideologues and the men in charge of day -to -day Government, a conflict

which was resolved in favour of the former in 1941, no doubt partly

because women were reluctant to provide the labour which was badly

needed.
 The depression, Nazi ideology, and the build -up to a partial

war economy affected policies towards women not only in employment

of all kinds but also in the realm of higher education. The broad

categories into which this work falls therefore include higher

education and senior schooling, as well as employment outside the

home and, particularly, the professions. Since attitudes in these

areas were partly conditioned by, and partly conditioned, attitudes

towards the position of women in the family, particularly as child -

bearers, some discussion of marriage and morals is included. The

part played by the women's organisations in the Imperial and

Republican periods necessitates some brief discussion of them, while

the Nazis' attempt to organise German women - with a marked lack of

success - must also be considered. Naturally, many omissions remain;

this work cannot claim to be a comprehensive social history of

women in the 1930s.

The points which are of most general interest here are the

continuity of policy from about 1930 to 1935/36, in spite of - or

perhaps because of - the assumption of power by the Nazis, the

failure of the Nazis to institute a fully totalitarian regime largely

because of their dependence on positive support from the people, and

the conflict between Party and State. With regard particularly to

women, it is clear that while equality of rights and equality of

opportunity were not achieved in the Weimar years, enough progress

was made in securing a place for women in employment generally, in

the professions and in higher education, for attempts at discrimination

against them - before as well as after 1933 - to fail to have

significant effect. The net result of the 1930s was, in fact, to

consolidate their position in these areas, once the Nazis' immediate

political and foreign ambitions necessitated an increase in personnel

in them in the later 1930s. This was in spite of the Nazis'

overwhelming obsession with the birth rate, which led at first to

attempts to remove women from activity outside the home, and then to

preoccupation with providing for the welfare of employed women.

Connected with this, the 1930s also witnessed a reversal of the post-

war tendency to underestimate the contribution to the life of the

nation of the full -time housewife and mother. For "Aryan ", "politically

reliable" German women, then, the Nazi regime brought some benefit,

and the disadvantages experienced by women were very often those

which men, too, suffered. But benefit and disadvantage alike were

conditioned not by the needs or desires of individual Germans or of

groups of Germans; the needs of the State, as interpreted by the

Nazi Party, and particularly by Hitler, had primacy in every area

of policy.
 Table of Contents

Page no.

Acknowledgments

Preface i
CHAPTER ONE : GENERAL INTRODUCTION

A. The Background 1
B. Women's Rights in a Political
Context 6
C. The Middle -class Women's
Movement in the Weimar Republic 18
D. The End of the Women's Organisations
under the Nazis 29

CHAPTER TWO : MARRIAGE AND MORALS

Introduction 41
A. The Birth Rate and Population Policy 43
B. Marriage and Divorce 65
C. Abortion and Contraception 77
D. The Unmarried Mother 95

CHAPTER THREE: THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN OUTSIDE THE

HOME

Introduction 112
A. The Employment of Women after the
Great War 113
B. The Campaign against the Woman
Worker, 1930 -34 125
C. The Organisation and Welfare of the
Woman Worker in the Third Reich 146
D. Attempts to Attract Female Labour,
before the Second World War 155
E. Nazi Schemes of Compulsory Service
for Girls 166
F. The Failure of Attempts to Win Women
for the War Effort 174

CHAPTER FOUR : HIGHER EDUCATION AND SENIOR SCHOOLING

FOR GIRLS

Introduction 188
A. The Depression and Opposition to
Higher Education for Girls; in
particular, the Nazi View 189
B. Nazi Policies in the Field of Higher
Education for Girls 203
C. Girls' Senior Schooling in the Third
Reich 232
CHAPTER FIVE: WOMEN AND THE PROFESSIONS

Introduction 254
A. Progress and Prejudice in the Weimar
Republic 256
B. Purge and Co-ordination, 1933 -34 274
C. Consolidation and the Conflict between
Doctrine and Necessity, 1934 -40 293
Epilogue 326

CHAPTER SIX : THE NAZI ORGANISATION OF WOMEN

Introduction 329
A. The Organisation of Nazi Women before
the Machttibernahme 331
B. The Power -struggle in the Nazi Women's
Organisation, 1933 -34 347
C. The Women's Leaders, Women's Organisation
and "Women's Work" in the Third Reich 365

CONCLUSION

A. The German Scene 399

B. International Comparisons 406
C. Women in German Society in the 1930s 411

Bibliography 428

Glossary and List of Abbreviations used. in the Text and in

Footnotes 442
 Acknowledgments

The idea of studying the position of women in Germany

between the wars was suggested to me by Mr. Esmonde Robertson,

formerly of Edinburgh University, now of the London School of

Economics. For his advice and great kindness to me, especially in

the early years of this work, I am most grateful. I should also like

to thank Professor V. G. Kiernan of the University of Edinburgh,

who succeeded Mr. Robertson as my supervisor. Dr. J. S. Conway, of

the University of British Columbia, Professor Arthur Marwick,

formerly of Edinburgh University, now of the Open University, and

Mr. A. J. Nicholls, of St. Antony's College, Oxford, gave me

valuable advice and encouragement at critical points. The staff of

various libraries and archives have been most helpful and friendly,

and I should like to mention particularly those of the Bundesarchiv,

Koblenz, the Berlin Document Center, the Institut fair Zeitgeschichte,

Munich, and, especially, the Wiener Library in London. In addition,

the obvious is worth stating: Edinburgh University's Library and

its staff have been a constant source of support throughout these

last eight years. On the more personal level, the encouragement and

support of my parents enabled me to embark on this project in

comfort, while more recently my husband has tolerated the domestic

regime which has enabled me to write this thesis. Its content, and

consequently its shortcomings, are, of course, my responsibility alone.

 1.

PREFACE

Remarkably little of substance has been written about the

position of women in Germany in the inter -war years. The Weimar years

are particularly neglected, with only occasional references to

women's status, and those chiefly as parentheses. The major

exception to this is a panegyric by an American, Hugh Wiley Puckett,

called Germany's Women Go Forward; this was published in 1930 and gives

some idea of developments after the Great War. The leaders of the

middle -class Women's Movement wrote a history of their campaigns,

but this is chiefly concerned with the period before 1914. The

relevant chapters of Werner Th8nnessen's Frauenemanzipation are

particularly thin in a work on Social Democratic women which is

generally sketchy. For Nazi Germany, there is an interesting and

competent, but purely descriptive account of the years up to 1936,

in Clifford Kirkpatrick's Woman in Nazi Germany, which was first

published in the United States in 1938. There were also numerous

pamphlets produced by the Nazis themselves, and by Communists in Britain

and abroad; both these sources are useful, but they can hardly be

termed reliable, the Nazis, naturally, painting an idyllic picture of

their ideology in practice, of their rescue of women from the

degradation of the Weimar system, and the Communists extravagantly

claiming that the Nazis had enslaved women, distorting the picture to

fit their own rigid ideology.

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in the

history of female emancipation and the Women's Movement, no doubt

partly at least as an accompaniment to the rising feminism, or

"women's lib ", of the 1960s and 1970s. The most recent product of this

has been the thesis by Dr. Richard Evans on the feminist movement in
 ii.

Germany up to 1919, which in some respects forms a useful introduction

to this thesis. Before that, Dr. David Schoenbaum had included a

colourful but haphazard chapter on women in the Third Reich in his

thesis, subsequently published as Hitler's Social Revolution, Richard

Grunberger had produced an entertaining but often inaccurate chapter

on women in his generally suspect Social History of the Third Reich,

and Joachim Fest had written about Die Deutsche Frau and Mutter, a

piece more about ideology than social analysis, in what is now in

English The Face of the Third Reich. Each of these has its points of

interest but none gives a coherent picture of the position of women in

the Third Reich, nor even of any aspect of it. Thus, relatively little

is known about the position of women in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s,

although a substantial corpus of mythology exists.

It is the aim of this work to describe and discuss some aspects

of the status of, and opportunities for, women in Germany in the years

1930 to 1940. This period forms a logical unit whose bounds are the

impact of the world economic crisis on Germany and the Nazi regime's

attempt to wage war with only a partial war economy, while the

German army is still victorious. To have tried to cover the years of

the Second World War would have been unwise, for two reasons: it

would have added substantially to the size of a work that is already

large; and it would have introduced a disproportionate amount of

material which referred to a highly abnormal situation, one which the

Nazis saw as an interruption of their domestic policy, but one which

was necessary if this was ever to be implemented. To have drawn to

a close in 1939, with the outbreak of war, would not, however, have

been much more satisfactory, since trends which were apparent then,
and which had manifested themselves even earlier, can be

conveniently followed into the first full year of the war, and largely

left there because the failure to defeat or make peace with Germany's

only remaining foe, Britain, meant that the ad hoc arrangements made

in 1939 -40 for war production, and the gearing of society to a war

situation on a temporary basis, would have to be transformed into a

longer -term system.

Within the decade 1930 to 1940, the significance of the year

1933 is inescapable; the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German

Chancellor on 30 January and the rapid progress towards the creation

of a one -party State, effected in July 1933, had far -reaching

implications for all Germans. But to have begun this work in 1933

would have been to neglect - as others have done - the vital last

years of the Weimar Republic, when trends were already apparent in

many aspects of economic and social, as well as political,

development which were to be intensified, or, more often, distorted

after the Machtübernahme (Nazi assumption of power). The year 1933

continues to hold a magnetic attraction for Germans and for historians

of Germany; to this extent, Nazi propaganda has been highly successful,

since it was the Nazis themselves who first depicted 1933 as a great

turning -point in German history, as the year of "the national

awakening".

Indeed, the events of 1933 heralded changes in every aspect of

German life; but these were conditioned by German traditions and

experience as well as by Nazi ideology. It is not, in any case, easy

to gauge the significance of Nazi policies without some knowledge of what

they replaced. Study of developments in the last years before the Nazi
 iv.

takeover, particularly from 1930, reveals that there is a strong

degree of continuity in German domestic policy in the years 1930 to

1935/36. It has long been realised that "the descent into

dictatorship" began even under the Brining Government, with resort to

the use of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution resulting in the

overriding of the parliamentary system by Presidential decree, but

there has been little attempt to investigate whether this trend in the

political sphere is paralleled in economic and social policyl. One of

the major themes of this work is that there was continuity in

domestic policy in the first half of the 1930s, in spite of the

momentous events of 1933, simply because of the cataclysmic and all-

pervading effect of the world economic crisis, which began in autumn

1929, on Germany. The changes which took place in 1935/36 are

indicative of two factors: by this time, the Nazis had made their

medium-term plans, and were beginning to implement them within the

context of their long-term aims; but at least as important is the

end of the depression, and the consequent end to the emergency measures

initiated to alleviate its effects, particularly the massive

unemployment which had been its chief characteristic.

To say this is not to deny that the position of women was

affected by the coming to power of a Party which, indeed, had very

fixed ideas about the role women should play in the life of the nation.

But before the Nazis came to power the position of women in Germany had

already been deeply affected by the economic crisis which had thrown

1. Christoph Fahr, "Schulpolitik im Spannungsfeld zwischen Reich und

Ländern: Das Scheitern der Schulreform in der Weimarer Republik ",
Das Parlament, 17 October, 1970, makes some interesting points
about continuity in educational policy in the late Weimar and early
Nazi period.
 v.

millions of people in manual, clerical, managerial and professional

positions out of work. It was the condition of the labour market -

with the gradual but consistent reduction of unemployment figures

from 1933, to a situation where there was, in the later 1930s, a

shortage of labour which became acute in 1940 - which was

undoubtedly the single most influential factor in the development

of attitudes to and opportunities for women in wage and salary-

earning positions outside the home. Its impact went far beyond

the narrow employment situation, affecting also educational policy

and official attitudes to women in the family context, and brought

Nazi theory about women's role into sharp conflict with the needs of

the German economy, in its widest sense, in the later 1930s,

particularly once Germany was at war.

The broad sections into which this work falls therefore include

the position of women within marriage and family life, the employment

of women outside the home, and educational and professional

opportunities for women. The part played by women's organisations

in compaigning for better opportunities for women throughout the

period of the Empire and the Republic necessitates some brief discussion

of them, while the energy expended on trying to build up a massive

organisation of women to guide them towards activities approved of,

and indeed arranged by, the Nazi party justifies the inclusion of a

chapter on "The Nazi Organisation of Women ". Limitations of space

have led to the relative or even complete neglect of aspects of the

subject which may seem important, and for which material is available;

for example, it has not been possible to include more than passing

references to the girls' branch of the Hitler Youth, the Bund deutscher

Mdel, while the Labour Service could have received a far more detailed
 vi.

treatment than it has in Chapter 3. Only fleeting mention is made

of social mores, although the position of the unmarried mother is

discussed in Chapter Two, and nothing is said about the contribution

of women - like Ricarda Huch and Klithe Kollwitz, for example - to the

cultural life of the Weimar Republic. The day -to -day life of the

working -class woman is alluded to at times, but not described in any

systematic way. Particularly in the chapters on education and the

professions, the emphasis is on a very small minority of German

women indeed. But it was in these two areas that questions of women's

rights and opportunities were most alive, in Germany as in other

European countries and North America. If the women affected by reforms

in these areas even now constitute only a larger minority, it is

nevertheless true that achievements there have eventually opened up

questions of equality for women generally, in the legal, economic and

social contexts.

With regard to the 1930s themselves, it has been firmly

asserted, and equally firmly believed, that the assumption of power by

the Nazis meant a complete transformation in the position of women,

and a transformation for the worse. Writing in January 1934,

Alice Hamilton, an American doctor, asserted, on the basis of her own

observations and information from inside Germany, that

"German women had had a long and hard fight but they
had won a fair measure of equality under the Republic. Now
all seems to be lost and suddenly they are set back, perhaps
as much as a hundred yearsi -.

This was very much the kind of picture that tended to be given by those

who had emigrated from Germany in and after 1933 for political

1. Alice Hamilton, "Woman's Place in Germany ", Survey Graphic,

January 1934, p. 26.
 vii.

reasons1. But it is an accurate representation of neither the

situation between the end of the Great War and 1933 nor that after

1933. The "fair measure of equality" achieved in the 1920s was, as

disgruntled feminists and socialists constantly complained during the

Weimar years, enshrined in the Constitution of 1919, but not in the law

of the land. The provisions of the Civil Code of the Empire, which

became effective in 1900, had given men decisive superiority within

the marriage relationship, and while legislation was not forthcoming

to implement the clauses of the Weimar Constitution which declared,

for example, that both parents should have responsibility for the

upbringing of their children, they remained purely pious affirmations

of intent, without any legal effect. And while it was no doubt

reasonable to assume from Nazi utterances before 1933 that in the

Third Reich women would be sent back to the home en masse, the fact

is that the Nazis, like any other party, found that proclaiming

ideology in the safety of opposition was one thing, but that when

they were put in the position of exercising power circumstances

which were partly beyond their control, partly of their own making,

obliged them to modify, and in some cases to abandon, previously-

formulated policy. Thus they found that during the Second World War

they had to try to persuade married women and even mothers to go out

to work, and not devote themselves entirely to home and family - the

role deemed most suitable for women in Nazi theory.

There is a risk in trying to revise earlier views of an

historical phenomenon like National Socialism: a recent reviewer

1. E.g., Judith Grunfeld, "Women Workers in Nazi Germany ", Nation,

13 March, 1937. The author was an active member of the SPD in
Germany up to 1933.
 viii.

expressed concern that revision might lead to a softening of

attitudes towards this most evil of movements1. Thus, the difficulty

in pointing out where critics of the Nazis have been in error, and

especially where they have wrongly attributed bad or philistine

policies to them, is that one may be suspected of consciously or

unconsciously defending the Nazis. To try to avoid this, I must therefore

now assert that I do not believe that it is possible to defend those

who ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945. We all know that they committed

the most heinous crimes, of courting and causing a long and terrible

war which brought death or immense suffering to millions of people

throughout the world, and of treating with revolting and unspeakable

brutality certain minorities, especially the Jews, for whom they

nurtured an implacable and irrational hatred. Recognition of this

makes it impossible for us to regard any aspect of Nazism

dispassionately, and rightly so, I believe. But this should not place

a taboo on analysing parts of the Nazi system in a methodical way; to

explain it is not to justify it. I say this because at various

places in this work I am obliged to state or to imply that "this aspect

of Nazi policy brought some benefit to women" or "the Nazis did not initiate

this policy which was disadvantageous to women ". To make such remarks,

within highly restricted areas of discussion, is not to say that the

net result of Nazi policies towards women was favourable, nor is it to

say that the motives behind any apparently beneficial actions were

benevolent.

Some understanding of basic Nazi beliefs and aims is essential

1. Gordon Brook -Shepherd, "More Noises from the Bunker ", Sunday
Telegraph, 15 July, 1973, says "How can you reassess Hitler
except upwards ?"
 ix.

to a discussion of their policies towards any group in society, in

this case the female sex. From the hotch-potch that was Nazi ideology,

the following assumptions consistently emerge. In the first place,

the traditional divisions of class and creed were superseded by the

fundamental division - in the Nazi view - of race. The Nazi leaders

genuinely and fanatically believed that Jews, Slays and the coloured

peoples were inferior types of being; had they been less sincere in

this belief, they might have been less dangerous. As it was, they

claimed that the "Aryan" race, to which those of German stock

belonged, had, in order to protect and preserve itself, to use every

means at its disposal to destroy these "inferior peoples" before they

destroyed the "Aryan" race. The inherent malevolence of non -"Aryans"

towards the "Aryan" race was accepted as the logical corollary of

their inferiority.

To further the survival of the race most fitted for leadership,

physical exercise became a cult, while strength and "Nordic"

features became vital attributes. Quality, in this sense, was not,

however, enough; in order to overcome the teeming hordes of these

"inferior peoples ", the relatively small numbers of the "Aryan" race

would have to be increased, urgently and on a huge scale. It was

this obsessive line of thought, absolutely basic to the Nazi

Weltanschauung (philosophy of life), which conditioned the Party's

attitude to the role of women, since women are the child -bearers of

a nation. Men, as the other half of the genetic equation, were by no

means exempt from official concern in this context: they were

exhorted to marry young, and even, if they were public employees,

threatened with being passed over for promotion if they did not marry
 x.

and start a family1. But women's biological function made her much

more the focus of the concern of the Nazi leaders in questions of

population policy. This applied only, of course, to the "Aryan"

race; women of other races could be worked to death or tortured in

concentration camps, while intricate legislation was prepared to

protect the reproductive capacity of "Aryan" women. It was, after

all, not at all desirable, in the Nazi view, that non -"Aryans" should

procreate, since this only increased in number the enemies of the

"Aryan" race. For this reason, it was pointed out in 1939 that the

strict prohibition of abortion did not apply to Jews2.

Within the "Aryan" race, the primary division was that of sex,

providing two complementary, not antagonistic, elements which each

played a predetermined part in the gigantic jig -saw which was the life

of the Volksgemeinschaft (national community). As Frau Scholtz- Klink,

leader of the Nazi women's organisation, told some of its members in

1936, "the guiding principle of German women to -day is not to campaign

against men but to campaign alongside men "3. While men very definitely

played the leading role in the Nazi State, with women excluded from

political life, the Nazis did not accept that they were subordinating

women completely to men; rather, they claimed, they were drawing a

distinction - the natural distinction - between the areas of activity

of men and women, so that each sex might better perform its function

for the good of the nation. This insistence on the separation of the

1. "Der Beamte soll frühzeitig heiraten", Westdeutscher Beobachter,

3 August, 1937.

2. BA, NSD30 /vorl. 1836, Informationsdienst..., March 1939, "Anwendung

nur auf das deutsche Volk ".

3. "Die Aufgaben der deutschen Frau ", VB, 27 May, 1936.

 xi.

sexes is a crucial feature of Nazi policy towards women, in all

areas of life. The sexes, then, were to come together only for the

most important function of all, that of procreation. The Nazis

turned to the ancient Teutonic relationship - or, at least, what

they thought it had been - where man was the warrior and woman the

homemaker. They claimed that civilisation, especially in industrial

society, had undermined the relationship between the sexes by altering

the "natural" roles of man and woman, and held that the differences

between the sexes should not be denied or ignored, but gladly accepted,

and indeed emphasised.

In the Nazi view, the chief difference was that man was

essentially productive, and woman fundamentally reproductivel. By

the same token, man was creative while woman was imitative. Thus,

woman's position in Nazi society was to be one which gave her the

chance to exhibit her "natural" qualities - sympathy, self- sacrifice and

comradeship, rather than demanding of her the "unnatural" attributes of

independence, intellectual ability or a competitive spirit. Following

from this, then, the Nazis were at once ideologically opposed to

the employment of women outside the home, to more than a very limited

amount of academic education for girls, and, above all, to feminists

and all proponents of equal rights for women who, they claimed,

treated the sexes as identical when they were rather "gleichwertig aber

nicht gleichartig" (equivalent but not the same)2.

1. Elfriede Eggener, "Die organische Eingliederung der Frau in den

nationalsozialistischen Staat ", doctoral dissertation for Leipzig
University, 1938, p. 24.

2. "Die Geschlechter im Dritten Reich ", Frankische Tageszeitung, 17

April, 1934.

"Dies aber ist die 'Lady " , Das Schwarze Korps, 2 May, 1940.
 xii.

In matters relating to women in society, then, the Nazis

were diametrically opposed to all that the liberals and socialists,

both men and women, had campaigned for before 1918 and had continued

to support in the 1920s. The franchise, too often regarded as itself

constituting emancipation, was the symbol of the struggle to win

equal rights for women, and so although the Nazis did not propose

to deny women the right to vote, they claimed that they would bring

an end to the disgraceful situation where women were present at, and

even participated in, the activities of the Reichstag; the ballot -box

had, they claimed, sullied German womanhood1. The "liberal -democratic-

Marxists" and "Jewish -intellectuals" who had brought this about had

tried, said the Nazis, to disguise the differences between the sexes,

and the result had been the aping of men by some women in a ridiculous

caricature, in terms of character, aspirations and outward appearance2.

1. Hitler expressed his views on the subject frequently, e.g., "I

detest women who dabble in politics.... In 1924 we had a sudden
upsurge of women who were attracted by p litics.... They wanted to
join the Reichstag, in order to raise the moral level of that
body, so they said. I told them that 90% of the matters dealt with
by parliament were masculine affairs, on which they could not have
opinions of any value.... A man who shouts is not a handsome sight.
But if it's a woman it's terribly shocking.... In short, gallantry
forbids one to give women an opportunity of putting themselves in
situations that do not suit them ". Hitler's Table -Talk, London,
1953, pp. 251 -52, 26 January, 1942 (Evening).

BA, R451I/64, DV?' Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Frauenrundschau, 4 March,

1932, "Nationalsozialisten and Frau ", p. 1141.

2. Hitler's speech to the Nazi women's organisation at the 1934 Party

rally, Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, Wtirzburg,
1962, p. 451.

Rudolf Hess, "Die Aufgaben der deutschen Frau ", VB, 27 May, 1936.

G. Vogel, Die Deutsche Frau: Im Weltkrieg und im Dritten Reich,

Breslau, 1936, vol. III, p. 5.
 xiii.

There were indeed grounds for these accusations, however

masked they might seem to be by the Nazis' vicious hysteria. It was

not only in the most noticeable aspects, such as the wearing of

trousers, the copying of men's hair -styles, the ostentatious

smoking of cigarettes in public, that women had tried to imitate men,

and thus prove their equality with them. The founding of the Open

Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman Worker in

1929 had led to the raising of demands in Germany that measures of

labour protection - measures actually favourable to women in terms

of their physical health - be revoked, since they prevented women from

enjoying complete equality on the labour market1. The Communists could

perhaps be accused of wanting the best of both worlds, but their demands

for equal pay for equal work and, in addition, increased maternity

benefit and labour protection for women, were more sensible than the

Open Door's indiscriminate demands for equality at any price2.

The Open Door and its supporters were, however, in a tiny

minority, and by characterising Weimar democrats as sharing their

views the Nazis deliberately misrepresented the political and social

climate of the Republic, for their own ends. The large body of

conservative opinion, a majority of which was female, in the

influential Roman Catholic Centre Party and in the German Nationalist

camp, opposed the excesses of radical feminists, the more consistent

but still extreme views of the Communists, and even the cautious and

at times half-hearted egalitarianism of the Social Democrats, while

1. Report in JADG, 1930, pp. 191 -92. See also Chapter 3, pp. 119 -20.

2. BA, R2/18554, proposal for a Bill put to the Reichstag by KPD

members, 16 October, 1931.
 xiv.

liberals in the People's Party and even in the Democratic Party

were coming to the conclusion by the late 1920s that in some cases

freedom had been abused. Together the Nationalists, the Centre

and the People's Party, with some support from the Democratic Party,

planned to introduce a Bill to permit censorship as part of their

campaign against "filth in the theatre and in literature "1. The

Churches were active in the front line of those fighting to uphold

traditional moral values as they saw them2, and the moderate feminists

were concerned only to consolidate the modest gains they had made since

the turn of the century, not to promote an egalitarian revolution.

Gertrud Bäumer, leader of this group of middle -class feminists, found

it completely natural that even her most gifted pupils should want

more than anything to marry and have a family, which would absorb all

their interest and energy3. In domestic affairs, then, apart from

minority fringe groups of extremists, the word most applicable to the

political and social atmosphere in the Weimar Republic is possibly "moderate ",

but much of the time more probably "conservative ".

The governments of the Republic were bound to look conservative,

with the Centre Party unique in participating in every one from 1919 -32.

The coalition nature of these governments tended to mean stalemate,

1. BA, Kl.Erw., no. 267 -(1), letter from R. Gl5ckler of the DDP
Ortsgruppe Hildesheim to Gertrud Bäumer, 23 December, 1928.

2. "Soziale Kundgebung des Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchentages, 14.

bis 17.6.1924" and "Aufruf des Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchenausschuss
vom 25. Mai 1932 ", AfB, 1932, no. 2, pp. 88 and 95 -96.

Flann Campbell, "Birth Control and the Christian Churches ",

Population Studies, 1960, pp. 136 -38.

3. BA, op. cit., no. 258 -(1), letter from Gertrud Bäumer to Marianne
Weber, 12 September, 1931.
 xv.

particularly when the Social Democrats joined the Centre in government

in the years 1919 -23 and 1928 -30. The Centre was pathologically

terrified of any change which would undermine the position of the

Roman Catholic Church or promote Bolshevism, and it therefore

endeavoured to block any measure proposed by the nominally Marxist

SPD, in spite of the latter's conservatism as demonstrated in the

events of 1918 -19. There was minimal room for manoeuvre in a

situation where the secession of one of these parties from government

would precipitate the government's fall, and necessitate once again

a casting about for a viable partnership among the parties, or else a

new general election. The disastrous outcome of Brüning's resort to

the latter method in September 1930, when the Nazis increased their

parliamentary representation from twelve to 107, might seem to

justify the reluctance of earlier coalitions to use it, and their

preference for compromise instead.

But compromise meant the abdicating of legislative initiative

in any issue that was mildly contentious; the result was that the

clauses of the Weimar Constitution which declared the equality of women

in the family and in the opportunities available in education and the

professions were not transformed into law. The agitation of the radical

feminists throughout the Weimar years, and to some extent the

increased activity of the Communist Party in the late 1920s and early

1930s, was the response to governmental inaction on this front. But it

was not only political differences and political convenience that

conditioned this situation. The chief preoccupation in Germany for

most of the Weimar period was the financial and economic position of

the country after the disasters of the Great War and the inflation of

the early 1920s; there was only a brief period of apparent recovery
 xvi.

before renewed disaster in 1929 -30 again demanded the full attention

of the government, and relegated serious discussion of equal rights

for women to the realm of theory. Indeed, the economic crisis

created a situation where not only was progress towards equality for

women halted, but where voices were increasingly raised which

demanded that men be given preference in job opportunities of every

kind, with jobs in very short supply. The call for a restriction of

women to their "natural" occupations, in the home and with children

was raised by many who were not Nazis, and became increasingly

popular as the depression grew only deeper. Thus, the Nazis were able

to win support not in spite of their view of women's role - which would

no doubt have been far less popular in time of economic stability -

but actually because of it. The groundwork for measures they would

introduce to reverse the progress made in opening up opportunities for

women was laid before they came to power.

 CHAPTER ONE

General Introduction

A. The Background

The granting of the national franchise to all German women

over twenty in November 1918 was the symbol of the emancipation

for which the feminist movement in its various branches had fought

since the founding of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein

(General German Women's Association) by Luise Otto in 18651. In

some respects it was merely a symbol: the Imperial Civil Code,

which had come into effect as recently as 1900, and which remained

in force regardless of the change in 1918 from Empire to Republic,

was permeated by a paternalistic assumption of woman's dependence

on man which had ceased to be valid before the Great War. Indeed

single women were put on an equal footing with men as far as

written law went; but the vast majority of women would marry at

some time2 and thus accept the authority a husband might choose

to exert in most aspects of family life. The husband, for example,

had the right to choose the place of residence, the names and

religion of the children of the marriage, and the character and

duration of their education. The wife was "entitled and obliged

1. For a detailed and fully- documented account of some aspects of the

feminist movement under the Empire, including the campaign for
suffrage reform, see the unpublished D. Phil. thesis by Richard J.
Evans, "The Women's Movement in Germany, 1890 -1919 ", Oxford, 1972.

See also Katharine Anthony, Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia,

New York, 1915.

2. In 1900, e.g., in a female population of 28.6 million 16.4 million

were single; but almost 10 million of these were under 15, and a
further 1.6 million between 15 and 18; thus only 5 million women
over 18 were single, compared with the 9.7 million who were married
and the 2.4 million who had been married; and no doubt many of the
younger single girls, at least, would still marry. Figures from
St.J., 1909, p. 4.
 2.

to conduct the family household ", and she was also obliged to

work in her husband's business, insofar as this was customary in

their social position. The husband was entitled to prevent his wife

from working for another person if it was clear that her employment

was "prejudicial to the interests of the marriage "; he also had

direct control of any money his wife might have or acquire, as a

dowry or legacy, for example.

There was one clause in the Civil Code which was of novel

significance for the married woman: this was the provision that she

might dispose freely of any money which she earned by her own effort

from gainful employment outside the home1. The 1907 census showed

that there were 8,243,498 women in full -time employment, constituting

almost 34% of all employed Germans - of whom 2.8 million were married.

If 1.8 million of these probably did not, as "assisting family members "2

receive a formal wage, there nevertheless remained a million married

women who were in a position to benefit from the independent earnings'

clause of the Civil Code, and the enhanced status in marriage which it

implied. While this provision was realistic, the Civil Code did on

the whole treat women in a backward- looking way; but, as a British

commentator observed, to adopt a more modern approach to the status of

women would have raised irreconcilable opposition, and doubtless been

an obstacle to the acceptance of the Code as a whole3.

1. M. Greiff (ed.), Bfrgerliches Gesetzbuch, Berlin and Leipzig,

1930, pp. 747 -63.

2. Figures from St.J., 1914, pp. 14 and 16.

3. E. Schuster, "The German Civil Code (1) ", Law Quarterly Review, 1896,
P. 32.
 If some of the new legal provisions did seem

patriarchal in both tone and substance, they nevertheless lacked

the complete subjugation implied in the codes of some other countries,

including the two at the political extremes of pre -1914 Europe. In

Republican France, the clause "le mari conserve toujours sa prérogative

de 'puissance maritale' avec son droit a 'l'obéissance"" remained in

force until as late as 19381. In Tsarist Russia, section 107 of

the Imperial Code was even more dogmatic: a wife's duty was "to obey

her husband as the head of the family, to be loving and respectful,

to be submissive in every respect, and show him every compliance and

affection, he being the master of the house "2. This conception of

marriage is highly reminiscent of the Pauline view, expressed in

Ephesians V: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto

the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is

head of the Church...." St. Paul's teachings certainly influenced and

informed the attitude of the Christian Churches towards marriage, after

as well as before the Great War.

Although women's legal position within marriage left much to

be desired, the feminists had nevertheless made some gains in the

years before the Great War, most notably in the field of education. By

1914, women were admitted to full matriculation in the universities of

every state of the Empire. The corollary of this, the provision of

facilities for academic secondary schooling - as an alternative to

1. Robert H. Lowie, Towards Understanding Germany, Chicago, 1954, p. 208.

2. Rudolf Schlesinger, The Family in the USSR, London, 1949, p. 281.

 4.

the genteel, anti-intellectual H8here TLichterschule - had also

been realised. These achievements were largely the result of a

sustained campaign begun by the middle -class women's movement in the

1860s and brought to success around the turn of the century under the

leadership of Helene Langet. Education was the feminists' first point

of attack on a male -dominated society because they realised that

adequate educational opportunities were essential if women were ever to

challenge men in the more specialised categories of employment, whether

skilled manual, clerical or professional. In addition, it was clear

that the under -education of women was a continual, if spurious,

justification for their relegation to political inactivity and gentle

submission in the home.

The feminists' campaign here was directed only at those areas

of education where women were at a noticeable disadvantage, senior

schooling and higher education; the numbers involved were therefore

extremely small, since for every girl who attended a senior school of

any kind in 1911 there were twenty -five girls at elementary school, and,

further, only 9% of all senior school pupils attended the new Lyzeen

or Studienanstalten, which alone provided an avenue to higher education2.

But the pioneering work in the interests of a tiny minority was to

prove of inestimable value to the somewhat larger numbers of girls

who would enjoy the chance to exploit their academic abilities to the

full in future decades, particularly once a wide range of professional

1. A good, brief account of these developments is to be found in

Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des Gelehrten Unterrichts, Berlin
and Leipzig, 1921, vol. 2, pp. 776 -81.

2. Figures from St.J., 1914, pp. 322 -25.

 5.

opportunities - restricted to teaching, medicine and social work

before 1918 - was accessible to women.

It was the Great War that gave women the chance to obtain

positions which had previously been exclusively male preserves. This

was particularly the case in industry, where women were increasingly

brought into skilled and responsible positions as men were called up

for active service. Women were not included in the Hindenburg

Programme of 1916, which provided for the conscription into industry

of all civilian men, but they were strongly encouraged to volunteer

for work and responded in large numbers1. Their reward was a moderate

narrowing of wage differentials, so that by the end of the war they

were, on average, being paid about half of men's wage rates2. Middle-

class women, too, contributed to the war effort; Gertrud B ,umer,

leader of the Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (League of German Women's

Associations), founded the Nationale Frauendienst (National Women's

Service) in 19143 to mobilise volunteers for welfare work and for the

making of clothing for the armed forces. Large numbers of middle -class

women also volunteered for the Red Cross4.

While working -class and middle -class women were serving their

country in a practical way, the path to higher education was open to

1. Charlotte Lorenz, "Die gewerbliche Frauenarbeit während des Krieges ",

in James T. Shotwell (general ed.), Der Krieg und die Arbeits-
verhaltnisse, Stuttgart, 1928, pp. 319 -20.

2. Gerhard Bry, Wages in Germany, 1871-1945, New York, 1960, p. 205.

3. BDC, Gertrud B,umer's file, "Lebenslauf", undated ( ?1936).

4. Lorenz, op. cit., p. 319.

Evans, op. cit., pp. 297 -98, 324.

 6.

those middle -class girls who had been the first to benefit from

the reforms in senior schooling immediately before the war. With

potential male students at the front, girls were admitted to German

universities in increasing numbers; whereas their immediately

pre -war share in the student body had been 5% or 6% by 1916 it had

risen to 9.5%, a level that would be maintained until it rose

again after 19231. All these developments suggested that when the

war ended women would be in a strong position to demand greater

opportunities, even equality of opportunity, in employment of all

kinds, including freer access to the professions; in addition, it

was becoming increasingly less defensible to deny women a voice,

through the suffrage, in the affairs of the nation.

B. Women's Rights in a Political Context

The end of the Imperial regime, coming at the same time as

the armistice in 1918, meant the removal of one of the major obstacles

to women's advancement generally and to their enfranchisement in

particular, the Kaiser. The caretaker Socialist Government was

quick to extend the suffrage to women, and the election of forty -

one women deputies as almost ten per cent of the membership of the

National Assembly in January 1919 seemed to bode well for rapid

progress towards equality of opportunity between the sexes2. It was

thus in a mood of optimism that Marie Juchacz of the SPD made the

1. Figures from St.J.: 1923, p. 318; 1924 -25, p. 357; 1928, p. 509.

2. Hugh W. Puckett, Germany's Women Go Forward, New York, 1930,

p. 252.
 7.

first speech to be delivered by a woman in a national representative

capacity, in the National Assembly at Weimar on 11 February, 1919:

"I should like to say now that the 'woman question' in Germany
no longer exists in the old sense of the term; it has been
solved. It will no longer be necessary for us to campaign
for our rights with meetings, resolutions and petitions.
Political conflict, which will always exist, will from now
on take place in another form. We women now have the
opportunity to allow our influence to be exerted within the
context of party groupings on the basis of ideology"1.

It needed only a decade to show that the claims made by Marie

Juchacz had been premature, and the hope implicit in them illusory.

By 1930 the radical feminists were convinced that progress towards

equality for women had been frustrated throughout the 1920s because

of the continuing majority of men in every parliamentary party. In

fact, women's representation in the Reichstag actually dropped in

the mid- 1920s, to a share of around six per cent2, although after

the election of November 1932 it again reached a figure of nine

per cent, when there were thirty -five women deputies3. The

enfranchisement of women had meant only, said the radicals, that

they were now represented; they remained powerless4. More moderate

feminists echoed this view: for Katharina von Kardorff, one -time

People's Party deputy in the Reichstag, the chief obstacle to

progress was precisely the arrangement which Marie Juchacz had

1. "Aus der Rede vom Marie Juchacz als erste deutsche weibliche
Abgeordnete, 11.2.1919 ", Vorwärts, 14 November, 1968.

2. Puckett, loc. cit.

3. Report in BF, January, 1933, p. 5.

4. Lida Gustava Heymann: "Deutsches Debacle ", FiS, November 1930,

p. 2, and "Frauenbefreiung", FIS, September October 1932, p. 5.
 8.

welcomed, namely the dispersal of the women representatives into a

large number of political parties, with partisan allegiance given

priority over the solidarity of the female sex. If women were ever

to make progress towards equality they would, she claimed, have to

act together as a combined non-party pressure group, although she

and her associates did have reservations about the creation of a

Women's Party as such.

In fact, given the sharp differences of opinion both between

and among socialist and middle -class women, the formation of a

Women's Party by women of all shades of political opinion was not a

practical proposition at any time during the Weimar years. A degree

of co- operation was achieved briefly, in 1930, when women Reichstag

deputies from all political parties - except the Economics Party and

the NSDAP, neither of which had women representatives - came together

in a study group to discuss matters of particular interest to women.

But this arrangement lapsed after July 1932, as increasing political

bitterness made collaboration impossible2.

The basic reason for the disappointment of the high hopes

entertained by feminists immediately after the war was neatly

pin-pointed by Katharina von Kardorff: "Our equality with men,"

she observed, "is written into the Constitution but not into the Civil

Code "3. Indeed Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution stated that "All

Germans are equal before the law. Men and women have fundamentally

the same civil rights and obligations ". Then, Article 119 acknowledged

1. BA, Nachlass Katharina von Kardorff, no. 38, 1927 -32, "Brauchen wir
eine Frauenpartei ? ", 22 January, 1930, pp. 44 -65.

Ibid., no. 27, letter from Emma Ender to Katharina von Kardorff, 5
January, 1931, p. 75.

2. Report in BF, October 1932, p. 6.

3. BA, Nachlass Katharina von Kardorff, no. 38, loc. cit.

 9.

that the Civil Code's view of the marriage relationship was out

of date: "Marriage is based on the equality of the sexes ". And

Article 128 affirmed the right of women to equality of opportunity

in public life and the public service with the words: "All citizens

without distinction are eligible for public office in accordance

with the laws and according to their abilities and achievements. All

discriminations against women in the civil service are abolished ". But

these statements were not of themselves sufficient to transform the

position of women in Germany: legislation alone could alter existing

laws and, particularly, the Civil Code, and until it was forthcoming

they remained in force as before.

The continuing majority of men in all parties should not of

itself have prevented the enactment of measures to promote equality

for women, since several of the post -war political parties were

pledged to support the implementation of the Constitution, including

the clauses which would reform the Civil Code where it discriminated

against women and which would provide equality of opportunity for

women in employment and public life. Of the middle -class parties

the Democratic Party (DDP) was the most unequivocally in favour of

equality for women; indeed, the outstanding figure in the pre -war

middle -class women's movement, Helene Lange, was one of the founders

of the DDP1, and other prominent feminists, including Gertrud Bäumer

and Marie- Elisabeth Luders, joined it in 1918. Esteem for Helene

Lange was such that she was created Honorary President of the DDP2.

1. HA, reel 37, fol. 736, Mitteilungen des Reichsfrauenausschusses

der DDP, 20 May, 1930, "Helene Lange ".

2. BA, R45111/14, Protokoll über die Sitzung des Parteiausschusses

der DDP, 25 May, 1930, pe 44.
 10.

The People's Party (DVP) was almost as committed to the achievement

of women's rights: its 1919 programme stated, in a paragraph

entitled "The Woman Question", that the party was in favour of the

"political, economic and legal equality of the sexes...and...the

admission of women to all offices and positions on condition of having

the requisite preparatory training.... "1.

During the 1920s both these parties developed a network of local

groups of women party workers, co- ordinated in each case by a National

Women's Committee which published a newsletter to circulate information

about the party activity of women at the local level and to feature

items of particular interest to women2. The aims of the DDP's National

Women's Committee were to defend and propagate the idea of democracy,

to promote the DDP, to educate German women to civic responsibility,

and to achieve equality for women3. Doubtless in recognition of the

active part played by women in the party, and in the hope of attracting

more female support, the party - now the "Staatspartei" - held

discussions in summer 1932 about the possibility of giving second place

on the national list of candidates for the next general election to a

woman4, a practice adopted in some state elections5; but nothing came

1. BA, 84511/62, "Grundsatte der DVP 1919" (1931 reprint), Sammlungen

...verschiedener Parteien, pp. 150 -51.

2. HA, op. cit., 20 April, 1930.

BA, 84511/64, DVP Reichsgesch,ftsstelle, Frauenrundschau, 4 March,

1932, p. 1141.

3. HA, op. cit., 20 January, 1930.

4. BA, 845111/51, Protokoll über die Sitzung des Parteiausschusses der

DDP, 7 July, 1932, p. 109.

5. BA, K1.Erw., no. 267, letter from Gertrud Baumer to Emmy Beckmann,
undated ?1929).
 11.

of theml. The DVP, however, did put their long-serving deputy Dr.

Elsa Matz forward as the third candidate on their list for the

election in March 19332, Dr. Matz was President of the DVP's

Women's Committee and a member of the executive committee of the

party3. The DVP's Women's Review paid tribute to the loyalty of

the party's women members in March 1932, describing their "tireless"

activity in supporting the party throughout the country4. But by this

time both the liberal parties were becoming very weak indeed, to the

extent that Lida Gustava Heymann, referring to the DDP even in

November 1930 had asked, in a parenthesis, "Does it still exist ? "5.

The mass of women continued to be strongly influenced by the

more conservative power groups, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran

Churches and, to some extent, the Nationalist Party (DNVP). The latter

had admitted women to political activity before the war more out of

self -defence against the socialists and the liberals, who had gladly

enlisted women's aid, than out of conviction; in fact, the DNVP's

chief women's organisation, the Deutscher Frauenbund 1909, was

specifically opposed to feminists of any political colour6. Nevertheless,

the DNVP had its own National Women's Committee, which in 1933

1. Reply by the DDP to a questionnaire sent to each party by the BDF

on the eve of the March 1933 election, about the putting forward
of women candidates, reported in BF, March 1933, p. 8.

2. Reply by DVP to the BDF's questionnaire, BF, op. cit., p. 9.

3. Elsa Matz's entry in Reichstags-Handbuch, Berlin, 1930, p. 417.

4. BA, R45I1/64, loc. cit.

5. Lida Gustava Heymann, "Deutsches Debacle ", FiS, November 1930, p. 2.

6. Walter Kaufmann, Monarchism in the Weimar Republic, New York, 1953,

p. 130.
 12.

claimed that it was obvious that the party was in favour of

"protecting equal rights for women "1. After all, the DNVP had

consistently presented women candidates at general elections

throughout the Weimar period, the most distinguished of whom was

Paula Muller-Ottfried, President of the Evangelical /omen's

Association, who was a Reichstag deputy throughout the 192052.

It was abundantly clear, however, that the DNVP and the

Evangelical Church, whose political views were very similar, aimed

to mobilise women for the purpose of forming an opposition to

progressive ideas which included pacifism, increased employment

opportunities for women at all levels, and any kind of "permissiveness"

in social behaviour or sexual morality3. Certainly, it did seem that

women preferred order to disorder; there was a higher proportion

of women's votes among those for Hindenburg in the Presidential

election of March 1932 than among those for any other candidate,

and women were in a minority of voters for the extremist candidates,

both Communist and Nazi4. The raison d'etre of Evangelical women

seemed to be to uphold the idea that women's role was, and should be,

that of housewife and mother; the Evangelical /omen's Association

1. Reply by DNVP to the BDF's questionnaire, BF, loc. cit.

2. Cuno Horkenbach (ed.), Das Deutsche Reich von 1918 bis heute, Berlin,
1930, p. 718.

3. "Soziale Kundgebung des Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchentages, 14.

bis 17.6.1924" and "Aufruf des Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchenausschuss
vom 25. Mai 1932 ", documents reproduced in AfB, 1932, no. 2, pp. 88
and 95 -96.

4. BA, R4511/64, DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Frauenrundschau, 6 April,

1932, "Zur Hindenburgwahl am 10. April ", p. 1167.
 13.

made its position clear in January 1932 with the pronouncement

that "German Evangelical women see in the child the God -given

natural perfection of marriage ". In their view, only medical

reasons could justify refusal by a married couple to have children'.

The views of the Roman Catholic Church were certainly as

uncompromising as those of the Evangelical Church; but, even so, the

Catholic Church realised that to give no ground at all on the "woman

question" would be only to its own disadvantage. Therefore the

political wing of the Church, the Centre Party, reluctantly made some

concessions to the feminists in its 1918 programme "Centre Party and

the New Political Order ". For the first time a Centre Party manifesto

supported women's suffrage and made mention of "the contribution

of women in political life ". While regretting that circumstances

necessitated the sanctioning of women's admission to the "brawling

and quarrelling" of politics, the Centre Party put a good face on it

by asserting that

"we are convinced that we shall find in our women enthusiastic

fellow- combatants and energetic helpers.... The counsel of
experienced women will be indispensable to us in creating a
new state structure.... "2.

But the continuing reactionary attitude of the Roman Catholic Church

was epitomised in the Papal Encyclical " Quadragesimo Anno" of 1931,

which demanded an end to the employment of married women3, and which

1. Ibid., Frauenrundschau, 28 January, 1932, "Deutsch -Evangelische

Frauen für die Erhaltung von Ehe und Familie ", p. 1111.

2. BA, R451I/62, "Zentrum und politische Neordnung: Ein Programme ",

Sammlungen...verschiedener Parteien, p. 39.

3. Quoted in Leo Zodrow, "Die Doppelbelastung der Frau in Familie und

Erwerbsberuf ", Stimmen der Zeit, 1962 -63, p. 376.
 14.
aroused the ire even of women who could in no way be termed radical

or socialist1. On the other hand, a representative of the Centre

claimed to have found considerable support, particularly among

women, for the party's view that women could not fulfil the demands

of two full -time jobs - one of these being that of housewife and

mother - satisfactorily; he also maintained that the man "is, and

remains, the provider for and head of the family "2. This, then, was

the attitude towards the position of women in society of the one

political party which was in every German government from 1919 to

1932.

The ascendancy of the Centre was to some extent facilitated

by the splitting of the SPD during the war, a circumstance which was

particularly serious for the working women's movement3. Most of the

leading women socialists of the pre -war period, notably Rosa Luxemburg

and Clara Zetkin, belonged to the radical wing of the party, and

therefore found themselves in opposition to the SPD's war-time policies,

finally becoming leading members of the German Communist Party (KPD)

on its founding at the end of 1918. These women had always disliked

the at times latent, at times overt?antifeminism of the rank and file

of the SPD4. In the KPD, the radicals were determined to return to

1. BA, Nachlass Katharina von Kardorff, no. 34a, "Papst contra Frau? ",
1931, PP. 79 -93.

2. BA, R2/1291, letter from W. Rompel to Gärtner at the Reich Ministry

of Finance, 10 April, 1929.

3. This "working women's movement" was not so much a women's movement

as a part of the socialist movement. There were women's groups
within the SPD and the KPD, but these were composed of women who
were full members of the respective party. See Alice Rühle-Gerstel,
Das Frauenroblem der Ge- nwart. Eine Ps cholo_ sehe Bilanz, Leipzig,
1932, pp. 142 -43, and BA, R58 1146, RMdI NsdL, "Kommunistische
Frauenbewegung ", 5 March, 1932.

4. Werner Thönnessen, Frauenemanzipation, Frankfurt, 1969, PP. 84 -98.

 15.

basic Marxist ideals, and so the liberation of women from all kinds

of discrimination would follow naturally from the liberation of the

working class from capitalism, since it was the capitalist system,

with its bourgeois morality, which had brought about the subordination

of women in society and in the economy1.

If the SPD had become bureaucratised before 1914, the process

was only intensified by the secession of the radicals and its new -found

respectability as a party of government. Docile moderates like Marie

Juchacz and Gertrud Hanna became the chief spokeswomen of the party;

these loyally upheld official party policy, and were at pains to

remind women members that they were first and foremost members of the

SPD, and that their women's organisation was only one constituent of

"this great party "2. Gertrud Hanna firmly believed that, in the

socialist trade union movement, at any rate, positive harm would result

from any attempt to isolate women in their own groups, and found

herself having to remind male trade unionists at times that the interests

of their movement would be better served by keeping women in it as

full members, alongside the men3. More than one delegate to the

SPD's 1927 congress voiced the opinion that not nearly enough was

being done by the party to interest women in all aspects of daily life

and to mobilise their support for SPD policies generally, not just

those of particular relevance to women; the middle -class women's

1. G. G. L. Alexander, Kämpfende Frauen, n.p., 1924, pp. 3 -4.

2. Marie Juchacz's speech to the Women's Conference at the 1927 SPD

Party Congress at Kiel, 27 -29 May, 1927, found in the published
proceedings of the Congress, Berlin, 1927, p. 302.

3. "Frauenarbeit und Gewerkschaften ", Gewerkschaftszeitung, 11 January,

1930, p. 22.
 16.

movement and the liberal parties were felt to be much more active

and successful in this1.

But although the SPD was nominally committed to the pursuit of

equality between the sexes, it had been a party to the Demobilisation

Orders of the post -war years which had the effect of dismissing

women from jobs to make way for men returning from the forces2. In

addition the onset of the Depression in 1929 -30 gave rise again to

hostility among working men and within the socialist unions towards

what they regarded as female competition for the ever -decreasing

number of jobs3. The SPD could boast the highest percentage of

women deputies in their parliamentary party, as compared with the

other parties; but women never held positions of the first importance

in the party4. During the Weimar period the SPD was incapable of

shaking off prejudices which had a long tradition, while at the same

time exhibiting complacence about the things they had achieved.

On the other side of the socialist camp there was no equivocation

whatsoever. The break-away KPD trade union organisation, the

Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO), founded in 19295, was fully

explicit about its policy, which included the abolition of wage

1. Report of the SPD's 1927 Party Congress, pp. 303 -04, 308.

2. Thannessen, op. cit., pp. 100 -02.

3. Ibid., pp. 105, 118-19.

4. Richard N. Hunt, German Social Democracy, 1918 -33, New Haven, 1964,
p. 81.

5. Hermann Weber (ed.), V5lker hart die Signale, Munich, 1967, pp. 22-
23, 126.
 17.

differentials between men and women, within the context of a campaign

for a general rise in wages, as well as more thorough protection for

women workers and longer paid leave for expectant and nursing mothers.

The RGO also campaigned for equal salaries for men and women white -

collar workers, and for the repeal of provisions, reintroduced in

1932, permitting the dismissal of married women civil servants. In

a clear reference to the contentious question about whether a woman

should be dismissed from public employment if she had an illegitimate

child, the RGO's manifesto asserted its opposition to "any

interference in the personal life of women civil servants "1.

The end of the 1920s saw the intensification of KPD activity

in Germany, with the directive from Stalin that Social Democracy,

above all, must be combated. Intensive propaganda campaigns were

launched with the aim of encouraging women, especially, to join the

proletarian struggle for a "Soviet Germany "2. The belief that

capitalism in Germany was reaching its crisis with the Depression

led to particularly energetic recruiting drives in 1931 and 1932.

These did bear fruit, but, given that the situation was particularly

favourable to Communist agitation - with compulsory wage cuts and the

shortage of jobs - the results were disappointing, especially among

women in the heavy industrial areas. Local women shop stewards were

felt by the executive to have neglected opportunities, and so greater

1. BA, R45/vorl. 10, RGO Referenten Materialien, October 1932, "Die

Arbeiterinnen in die Einheitsfrontaktion", pp. 12 -13.

2. BA, R58/1145, 6 February, RMdI /NsdL, 6 February, 1931, "Kommunistische

Prauenbewegung" .
 18.

central control was proposed and new targets for women's recruitment

were set in March 19321.

C. The Middle -class Women's Movement in the Weimar Republic

In addition to the split in the socialist camp, the middle -

class women's movement, in which there had already been sharp

differences of opinion before the war2, was now divided into two

groups whose attitudes had diverged considerably. Those who had been

in the leadership of the Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF)3 before

the war, and who had organised the Nationale Frauendienst during it -

the group led by Gertrud Bäumer - largely associated themselves with

the DDP in local and national politics, but also continued to be

active in their separate women's organisations within the BDF. The

other, smaller group was more radical, not affiliated to any

political party but wholeheartedly republican; it was strongly

feminist, pacifist, and thoroughly disenchanted with the "establishment"

of the women's movement which, felt the radicals, had been tamed and

institutionalised by its nationalist stance in the war, and bought off

by a few concessions to the feminist lobby after it.

The final split had come in 1915 when a small group of middle -

class feminists, led by Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg, had

condemned the BDF for volunteering to assist the war effort, and had

1. BA, R58/1146, RMdI /NsdL, 5 March, 1932, pp. 5 -13.

2. Evans, op. cit., discusses these differences in detail, as a consistent

theme of his work.

3. The BDF was a nationwide co- ordinating association of middle -class

women's organisations of a charitable, vocational, professional
and social nature.
 19.

preferred to join with women pacifists from other countries in

founding the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

at The Hague. The WILPF pledged itself to work for peace and

disarmament and to lobby governments in all countries to try to

achieve this1. As the organisation developed, in time of peace,

its demands became more far -reaching with as decisive an application

to domestic as to international affairs. In the election campaign

of 1930 the German branch of the WILPF urged its esmillidefts to canvass

and vote for candidates from any party which supported its twelve

demands, which included the abolition of the death penalty, the

implementing of the Constitution's provisions which promoted

equality for women and for the illegitimate child, the repeal of

the severe abortion law, paragraph 218 of the Criminal Code, and a

ban on the production of and trade in weapons2. Campaigning for

total disarmament, the WILPF preached the pointlessness of trying

to create protective devices against the use of poison gas and air

attacks on the civilian population; the only solution, as they saw it,

was to outlaw such threats by international co-operation, which would

bring to an end the irresponsible expenditure of vast sums of money

on armaments which was criminal in time of economic depression3.

Perhaps surprisingly, given their militant feminism, the

radicals, like the more moderate feminists, were opposed to the

creation of a Women's Party. They proposed rather that at elections

1. Rühle- Gerstel, op. cit., pp. 137-38.

2. "Zur Reichstagswahl ", FiS, September/October 1930, p. 1.

3. Report in FiS, April 1929, p. 8. The 1929 editions of Die Frau im

Staat devoted a high proportion of their space to articles and
reports on matters connected with war, peace, and poison gas.
 20.

there should be a "women's list" composed of women from the various

political parties in proportion to the parliamentary representation

of the parties. This would, they claimed, have the result of giving

women a larger representation and greater influence in the legislature

than they had during the 1920s; but the radicals also felt that

experience had shown that Germany's women were not yet sufficiently

politically mature for their schemel.

The German branch of the WILPF cast its net wide in trying to

attract support for its views. Although most of its leadership

regarded the Churches as bastions of reaction, it nevertheless

realised that their influence was still considerable, and therefore

tried to win their support for the disarmament campaign. The WILPF

contacted Adam Stegerwald, a leading member of the Centre Party, and

its representatives even obtained an audience with the Papal Nuncio,

Pacelli; they then used their tenuous connection with these names to

try to win over the Christian Trade Union organisation2. The German

branch was also extremely active on the international scene, playing

host to a full meeting of the League in Frankfurt in January 19293.

Three years later, another conference, of all international women's

pacifist organisations, was held in Munich, under the chairmanship of

the local WILPF leader, Constanze Hallgarten4. This meeting was

1. "Frauenpartei? Nein, Frauenlisten ", FIS, April 1931, p. 9.

2. IfZ, MA 422, frame 5797, letter from Karl Genzier to Otte, General
Secretary of the Association of Christian Trade Unions, 19 November,
1928.

3. Ibid., frame 5794, "Die modernen Kriegsmethoden und der Schutz der
Zivilbevölkerung ", proposals for the Frankfurt International
Conference of the WILPF, 4-6 January, 1929.

4. "München: Kämpferin gegen den Krieg", Süddeutsche Zeitung 15 September,

1966.
 21.

reported by the Nazis under the title "Pacifist scandal in Munich "1.

Besides disarmament, the other major issue which absorbed the

energies of the radicals of the WILPF was the position of women in

post-war Germany. The magazine of this group, Die Frau im Staat,

founded in 1918 by Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg, and

edited by them2, devoted considerable space in every issue in the

late 1920s and early 1930s to pointing out how little progress had

really been made in winning equality of opportunity and equality of

rights for women. It was here that they really felt themselves to be

out of sympathy with the liberal women of the BDF, who, not unjustifiably,

were proud of the achievements they had made in the pre -war period,

particularly in the field of education. The liberals were well aware

that far less progress had been made during the 1920s than had been

anticipated by both themselves and the radicals, in the euphoria of

1918-19 with the granting of the suffrage and the writing into the

Constitution of many of their demands3. But although the liberals

realised that much had been left undone - especially with the Civil

Code unamended - they nevertheless gave the impression, to the radicals

and to the young, who had not actually been involved in the struggles

of the Imperial period, that they were complacent, always harking back

to the things that they had achieved and to their contribution to the

war effort.

1. IfZ, MA 135, frames 136366 -67, NS-Korrespondenz 2, 15 January, 1932,

"Pazifisten -skandal in Mönchen ".

2. Lida Gustava Heymann's entry in Wer ist's? 1928, p. 656.

3. Looking back over the 1920s, Dorothee von Velsen referred, in a

letter to Gertrud Baumer, to "the disappointment at having achieved
nothing ". BA, Kl.Erw., no. 296 -(1), letter of 8 March, 1934, p. 31.
 22.

At first sight the ground between the liberal and the radical

groups in the middle -class feminist camp was not so very great. Both

groups favoured improved opportunities for women at all levels and in

all areas - economic, political, social, legal, cultural - and both

were outspoken in their attacks on a male- dominated society. In

addition, the liberals came out strongly in favour of close international

co- operation after the Peace Treaties had been signed. In a way,

however, their motive was different from that of the radicals, who

consistently and unconditionally supported disarmament and internationalism;

the liberals worked rather from the premise that if Germany were

disarmed compulsorily then they would campaign tirelessly to achieve

general disarmament1. But the liberals did genuinely believe that

peace must be preserved, and that the international activity of

women, whether generally in League of Nations' affiliates or

particularly with women from other countries, was not merely desirable

but actually essential.

Gertrud Balmer, for one, was the German delegate to the League

of Nations' committee on youth affairs, as well as being a representative

at international disarmament discussions2; it was, after all, largely

for her "outspokenly pacifist and feminist outlook" that she was not

only dismissed from the public service by the Nazis in 1933, but even,

from 1935 to 1937, denied the right to publish her writings3.

1. See, e.g., report in BF, 15 January, 1932, p. 1: "Das ohnmachtige,

waffenlose Deutschland...hat naturgemäss das allergrösste Interesse
daran, dass das Ziel der Abr{istungskonferenz erreicht wird ".

2. Gertrud Baumer's entry in Das Grosse Brockhaus, 1967, vol. 2, p. 393.

(letters of Gertrud Bäumer), letter

1930, p. 40.
to
Emmy Beckmann (ed.), Des Lebens wie der Liebe Band, Tübingen, 1956
Emmy Beckmann, 14 September,

3. BDC, Gertrud Baumer's file, "Aktenvermerk", 26 October, 1937, p. 3.

 23.

Her friend Dorothee von Velsen, also a member of the DDP, and

President of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein, was a member

of the committee of the World Union for Women's Suffrage, and was

also in 1932 the Reich Government's representative for social matters

and women's affairs in the German delegation to the League of Nationsl.

Marie Elisabeth Lüders, a DDP Reichstag deputy throughout the 1920s,

and a prominent member of the BDF and the Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund,

was a member of three international committees, including the Society

for a European Customs Union, and was, in addition, a leading member

of the German Society for the League of Nationsl. The BDF itself

became fully committed to working for universal disarmament, and in

1932 organised a giant petition to gain support for this3.

The liberal women of the BDF were also concerned with questions

of youth welfare, employment prospects for girls in time of economic

stringency, education of all kinds, and altogether anything which

they felt was of interest to women. At their meetings they could call

on representatives of the state governments, for example Frau Zeisler

from Saxony or Marie Baum from Baden, to report on policy in the

different Lander. They could also call on representatives of some

Reich ministries to explain the policies and the work of the central

government; women in this category included, apart from Gertrud Baumer

at the Ministry of the Interior, flare Mende in the Ministry of

1. BDC, 8393, Dorothee von Velsen, "Lebenslauf ", October 1937.

2. Horkenbach, op. cit., pp. 709 -10.

3. Report in BF, 15 January, 1932, p. 1.

 24.

Economics and Kate Gaebel at the central office of the Employment

Exchanges1. These women were themselves living examples of the

progress that had been made in winning acceptance for the

appointment of women to public office. This meant, however, that

these women were necessarily associated with the policies of the

governments for which they worked; since it was precisely these

governments which were failing to introduce progressive legislation

which would benefit women, the women associated with them came in

for a share of the criticism heaped on them by the radicals.

Naturally, the Reich governments were felt to have been particularly

reprehensible since legislation was still wanting, after a decade,

to implement the relevant clauses of the Constitution. As in all

other matters, however, any Government was rendered ineffectual by

its precarious coalition character, the growing succession of short -

lived administrations serving only to increase Ministers' reluctance

to introduce controversial measures.

The radicals understood this difficulty, and in the Depression

years they also appreciated that the Government's room for manoeuvre

was negligible. Their argument, however, was that it should have

been possible to achieve something more for women during the less

troubled years of the 1920s, and that the blame for not agitating

continuously to this end lay squarely with the women of the BDF,

although they also condemned women in the SPD and the trade unions2.

In an article entitled "Women's Liberation ", published in autumn 1932,

Lida Gustava Heymann, in her pungent style, began with the words,

1. "17. Generalversammlung des BDF in Leipzig", BF, 15 October, 1931,

pp. 3 -4.

2. Lida Gustava Heymann, "Frauen Heraus ", FiS, March 1930, pp. 3 -5.
 25.

"Women's movement: How remote it sounds; it meant something once ".

But even in the past, she felt, the BDF had been out of touch with

reality, just as it assuredly was by 1930:

"Then, as now, the Bund lacked visible

vitality; then, as
now, the Bund had ossified; then, as now, it was involved
in theoretical, soul -destroying discussions; then, as now,
it possessed neither a militant spirit nor courage,
neither initiative nor real enthusiasm ".

Given the real efforts of the BDF leaders in the pre-war period, this

indictment was rather unjust; and yet, in relation to the 1920s it

was not altogether without foundation. Indeed, Lida Gustava Heymann

paid tribute to Luise Otto who, she believed, had had real aims and

objectives which had been quietly ignored by the women's leaders from

the end of the nineteenth century. For forty years, she claimed, the

BDF had concentrated on securing for women a niche in social welfare

activity and educating them for a trade or a profession; the undoubted

practical value of this could not, she said, obscure the fact that it

had only a very indirect bearing on the complete liberation of women,

the aim of the radicals1.

It is clear, then, that the differences between the liberal

and the radical feminists were not merely minor ones of substance, but

fundamental ones of spirit. The liberals aimed for equality of

opportunity for women but accepted that women's physical strength,

their biological role and their natural inclinations might mean that

they would not in fact achieve positions fully equal with men's. As

the radical Alice RUhle- Gerstel commented, in a spirit of criticism,

"The Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein formulated the

first point of its programme with a sarcasm obviously
directed at the behaviour of many of its fellow women

1. Lida Gustava Heymann, "Frauenbefreiung", FiS, September/October 1932,

pp. 5-7.
 26.

as follows: 'The Women's Movement proceeds in the framing

of its demands from the fact of the fundamental physical
and spiritual difference between the sexes '"1.

The radicals, on the other hand, denied that there were any differences

so significant as to make complete equality of the sexes in every

aspect of life impossible. They took this principle to extremes that

seemed to many highly absurd, most notably in the matter of labour

protection for women; seeing it as a device to justify paying women

at a lower rate than men, they came out against it altogether, joining

the Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman

Worker, ,hose policy this was2. In this, they differed not only from

conservatives and from the liberal women's movement, but also from

both reformist and revolutionary socialists3.

The radical feminists believed that their campaign was one

on behalf of the entire female sex, whereas the liberals were interested

only in the affairs of professional, vocational and clerical women

workers. The failure of the middle -class and working -class women's

representatives to make common cause in the 1890s had led in fact to

a division of functions with the middle -class feminists nominally

representing the female sex but actually not representing its large

1. Rühle- Gerstel, op. cit., p. 131.

2. Lida Gustava Heymann, "The Open Door Council ", FiS, May 1929,
p. 1.

3. Th8nnessen, op. cit., pp. 165 -66.

Report in Jahrbuch. des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes,

1930, p. 192.

BA, R45/vorl. 10, RGO Referenten Materialien, October 1932, "Die

Arbeiterinnen in die Einheitsfrontaktion ", pp. 12 -13.
 27.

working-class element, whose interests were the concern of the socialist

parties, led as they were by men. The radicals had hoped to cross the

class barrier and show working-class women that male chauvinism was

as strong in the SPD as in the middle -class parties, and that one did not

need to look to the Moscow -dominated KPD to find representatives who

wanted equality for all women, not just a privileged minorityl. The

charge that the liberal feminists were not interested in the mass of

German women but worked only for the benefit of a few selfish "female

imitators of men" was also useful ammunition for the Nazis in their

attacks on the "women's rightists "2. It was certainly true that most

of the leading feminists were spinsters, and could therefore be

accused of being out of touch with the needs of the vast number of

ordinary German wives and mothers. The radicals, at least, showed

signs of appreciating some of the pressing problems of human

relationships by campaigning for the repeal of the abortion law and

the free dissemination of contraceptive advice3, but the reticence

preferred by the BDF women on such matters was epitomised by Gertrud

Baumer's remark to a friend that "I really hate the word 'sexual "4.

The differences between the radicals and the liberal feminists

were accentuated by an additional complicating factor, the generation

1. Rühle- Gerstel, op. cit., pp. 142-43.

2. Rudolf Hess, quoted in VB, 27 May, 1936.

3. Auguste Kirchhoff, "Siebenter Internationaler Kongress fair Geburten-

regelung", FiS, November 1930, pp. 5-6.

4. BA, Kl.Erw., 258 -(2), letter from Gertrud Bäumer to Marianne Weber,
17 December, 1934.

See also Evans, op. cit., p. 232.

 28.

problem. It was clear in the late 1920s and early 1930s that the

BDF was not attracting young women, and this was a source of concern

to the leadership. Naturally, some of the vitality had gone out of

the movement once the aims of the pre -war campaign had been achieved;

legal acceptance of women's suffrage, the admission of women to higher

education and the professions, demonstrable improvement in senior

schooling for girls, and the appointment of a small but significant

number of women to prominent positions, meant that the big issues had

been settled. The task now was one of comparative drudgery, the

ironing out of the minutiae and the unspectacular working out of details

to make the intentions expressed in the Constitution a reality. And

economic and political circumstances ensured that issues which seemed

more nationally pressing took precedence over this work, so that by

1930 there was very little to show for what had been promised.

This gave point to the radicals' charge that the Women's

movement as it stood was becoming a meaningless anachronism, and that

it could thus not expect to attract the youngl. This was felt to be

even more the case since the same old "establishment" still ran the

movement as had been running it for twenty years, and that without an

infusion of new blood it had become complacent and ossified. But the

majority of BDF members seemed in favour of the long-serving committee,

since it was returned again and again2; both the reason for and the

result of this was undoubtedly that potential young adherents

1. Lida Gustava Heymann, " Frauenbefreiung", FiS, September/October

1932, pp. 6 -7.

R{hhle- Gerstel, op. cit., p. 140.

2. Ibid., pp. 140-41.

 29.

increasingly stayed away, in disgust. The radicals were pleased to

publicise the BDF's "generation problem" in Die Frau im Staat, and

Lida Gustava Heymann took obvious pleasure in advising the discontented

young that the Open Door International was more their styled. But the

radicals also faced a generation problem in the WILPF, where the

younger women felt that the methods and ideals of the older leadership

were now out of date, but where they again failed to oust the old guard

- in spite of their claim that they were anxious to stand down - and so

the system remained unchanged in this camp, too2.

D. The End of the Women's Organisations under the Nazis

No doubt division, discussion and disputes were considered

healthy inside the democratic forms of the Weimar Republic. The

stalemate within the BDF, particularly, could probably have been

resolved either by a determined take -over bid by the young within it,

or else by its being eclipsed by a new, vital movement composed of the

disaffected young. In a way, of course, it could be said that this

latter possibility did come about, with the attraction of even some

feminists to what seemed to be a new and vital movement, National

Socialism, although the majority of them were quite clearly against it.

But, as Alice Rühle- Gerstel commented, "Women as a whole have no single

representative "3, and the splits and divisions between and within the

middle -class and socialist groups concerned with women's affairs were to

1. Lida Gustava Heymann, op. cit., p. 7.

2. "Die IX. Tagung des Deutschen Zweiges der Internationalen Frauenliga

für Frieden und Freiheit ", FiS, November 1929, pp. 6 -7.

3. Rühle-Gerstel, op. cit., p. 142.

 30.

prove critical in undermining potentially effective opposition from

women of all shades of feminist opinion, who could not, even in the

face of a common danger, act in concert.

And yet, it is clear that most groups in the feminist camp

underestimated the Nazi threat in one way or another. Indeed, the

radicals were well aware of what a Nazi accession to power would mean

for their movement and their campaignl; but Lida Gustava Heymann,

writing in autumn 1932, showed how unrealistic she was by claiming

that Hitler's party did not spell a real danger, since the cause of

feminism was going from strength to strength. In any case, she added,

"Dictatorships never last long"2. A representative of the DVP, writing

in the party's Women's Review early in 1932, was more pessimistic:

"The women's movement finds itself at the present time in

a crisis of a kind which it has never in all its history
experienced.... The most threatening danger seems to lie
in the political arena, since a movement with the great
political momentum, which National Socialism currently has,
has set itself decisively and unequivocally against the
ideals and aims of the women's movement. The women's
movement is portrayed in the party's press generally and
without restraint as a manifestation of decadence "3.

The BDF, however, demonstrated how little it comprehended the nature of

Nazism as late as March 1933. Its questionnaire, sent to all political

parties, asking how many women candidates were being presented by each4,

1. Lida Gustava Heymann, "Nachkriegspsychose ", FIS, March 1931, pp. 1 -2.

Grete Stoffel, "Die Arbeitslosigkeit und die Frauenarbeit ", FIS,

August /September 1931, p. 5.

2. Lida Gustava Heymann, "Frauenbefreiung", FIS, September/October 1932,

p. 6.

3. BA, R4511/64, DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Frauenrundschau 4 March,

1932, "Nationalsozialisten und Frau", p. 1141.

4. Report in BF, March 1933. pp. 8 -9.

 31.

was clearly based on two assumptions, that elections still meant

something in Germany, and that political parties still wielded

influence and would continue to do so; within a few months, both

these assumptions were to be proved invalid, and the women's

movement, in all its branches, effectively destroyed.

Even before all the parties were dissolved and the Nazis in

unchallenged control of the state it was made clear that no branch

of the women's movement was to be allowed to continue in existence.

After all, every point on which the separate groups agreed was

anathema to the NSDAP: pacifism, internationalism, feminism,

individualism were the bogeys - along with the menace of "Bolshevism ",

which for the Nazis covered the whole spectrum of left -wing thought

- which they were sworn to destroy. The tragedy of the women's

movement was, then, that its various warring factions could not

temporarily sink their differences to present a united front to a party

that was the enemy of all of them. The Nazis were able to pick off

each group one by one, without any concerted protest. The entire

process paralleled that taking place on the purely political front.

Perhaps, given the skill, speed and good fortune of the Nazis even a

united feminist movement could have achieved little; on the other hand,

its chances of survival would no doubt have been considerably greater

had there not been the disarray and the feeling of discouragement that

was so obvious in feminist circles in the early 1930s.

The women's organisations associated with the KPD and the SPD

were the first to go, naturally succumbing when their respective party

and trade union movement were banned. Those who were not arrested and

who refused to emigrate were at least temporarily hamstrung, although a

 32.

left -wing underground organisation did develop quite rapidly. It

was, however, a resistance movement of which some women - notably

the lawyer, Hilde Benjamin (KPD), Joanna Kirchner (SPD)1, and Eva

Schulze-Knabe'(KPD)2 - were members, and not at all a specifically

women's movement. There was, after all, only the one issue at this

time, the need to overthrow the Nazi regime. The radical feminists

were considered by the Nazis to be less dangerous, not being associated

with a large party machine, and so the Government contented itself with

banning their publications and ridiculing their leaders in the Nazi

Party's press3. But Nazi vindictiveness and greed were demonstrated

when it was announced in February 1935 that

"On the grounds of the regulations concerning the confiscation

of property of Communists and enemies of the state and the
people, the property of the journalists Dr. Anita Augspurg
and Lida Gustava Heymann has been confiscated, to the benefit
of the state of Bavaria"..

This was the penalty to be paid by those denied the right to pursue

their profession; they had seen their publications banned, their

organisations dissolved, and in the end had seen no alternative to

emigration, forfeiting in the process their personal possessions.

With the left -wing organisations outlawed and their leaders

disgraced, the conservatives, who had long hated the women's movement

1. Erich Stockhorst, F[lnftausend KMDfe: Wer war was im Dritten Reich,

Bruchsal, 1967, pp. 51 and 233.

2. BDC, P262, Der Oberreichsanwalt beim Volksgerichtshof, "Anklageschrift ",

2 December, 1941, pp. 37 -40.

3. F. Hamm, "Lida Gustava Heymann 'verteidigt' die deutsche Frau ", VB,
12 July, 1933.

4. Report in FZ, 1 February, 1935.

 33.

in any of its manifestations, felt that their hour had come, and

wholeheartedly pledged themselves to serve the new regimel. The Ring

Nationaler Frauenbünde, an association of conservative women's

organisations, wrote to Hitler in April 1933 welcoming the "considerable

efforts of the National Government to give strong leadership ", and

putting their organisation completely at his disposal2. Lammers

replied that Hitler graciously acknowledged "the willingness of the

nationalist women to collaborate with the state "3. But it was soon to

become apparent that the leadership of women's organisations, as of all

others in the Nazi state, would be in the hands of party members, and

that even the most compliant of conservative groups could no longer

hope to retain its own identity.

A number of the conservative organisations hoped to save

themselves by demonstrating their loyalty to the new regime in a

concrete way; the Evangelical Women's Association, the National

Association of German Housewives and the Bund Ktinigin Luise (Queen

Luise League), among others, at once joined the new Nazi association

of women's organisations, the Frauenfront4. The leader of the Bund

Königin Luise, Frau von Hadeln, was rewarded with the post of deputy

leader of the Frauenfront, whose leader was an enthusiastic young Nazi,

Lydia Gottschewski5. But early in 1934 a strong propaganda action was

1. See, e.g., Dora Hasselblatt (ed.), Wir Frauen und die Nationale
Bewegung, Hamburg, 1933, which contains articles by non-Nazi women
which are generally favourable towards Nazism.

2. BA, R43II /427, letter of ? April, 1933 (exact date not given).

3. Ibid., letter of 12 May, 1933.

4. Clifford Kirkpatrick, Woman in Nazi Germany, London, 1939, P. 57.

5. BDC, Akten des Obersten Parteigerichts, 2684/34, letter from Walter

Buch to Gottfried Krummacher, 20 September, 1933.
 34.

launched to bring about the dissolution of the BEL; for example,

in March 1934 the Party's press publicised the speech in which two

of the BKL's former office-holders declared that they had resigned

their posts because they had preferred to become ordinary members of

the Nazis' women's organisation than to be officials of any other

group'. Within a month of this incident, the BEL had dissolved itself,

on 1 April, 19342, although Hitler had promised Frau von Hadeln his

protection for her organisation, at the same time as he had made a

similar promise to Seidte about the Stahlhelm3. Other groups lasted

a little longer, but it was only a matter of time before a Nazi monopoly

was enforced in this area, as in most others. At the end of October

1935, the Deutscher Frauenbund, the DNVP's leading women's organisation,

was dissolved; the Stahlhelmfrauenbund's turn came a week later; and in

November 1936 the Flottenbund deutscher Frauen ceased to exist4. These

organisations were allowed to survive as long because they were no

threat to the Nazis, but their continued existence meant that there

was diversity of a kind that the Nazis could not tolerate, and so they

had, eventually, to be eliminated.

Of the organisations to which the Nazis had an intrinsic

objection the liberal ones were treated with the least severity. Indeed,

their leaders suffered, in that they were promptly dismissed from

1. "Tagung der NS- Frauenschaft ", VB, 7 March, 1934.

2. BA, SlR.Sch., 230, Altona Gau-Verordnungsblatt 2/34, 1 March, 1934.

3. BBC, op. cit.

4. "5 Jahre Reichsfrauenführung", FK, January 1939, p. 4.

 35.

positions they held in the public service, whether as civil servants,

teachers, lawyers or lecturers, on grounds of "political unreliability";

a law of 7 April, 1933 permitted this, as it also made possible the

dismissal of non-"Aryans" from the public service1. Thus, at a stroke,

the Government purged vital areas of employment, particularly the

highly sensitive teaching profession, which had been a stronghold of

feminism2. It was no doubt a severe blow to many women, to all those

who held less exalted positions than Gertrud Bäumer, who was one of the

first to suffer, but positions which gave them considerable interest

and satisfaction nevertheless3. But they were, within the limits of

Goebbels's censors, allowed to continue publishing their writings,

and were deprived of neither their personal freedom nor their property,

in contrast with the radicals and socialists.

In spite of the speed and ruthlessness with which the Nazis

moved, the BDF's leaders still hoped that their organisations would

be able to put up effective resistance to a complete takeover. But

those which did make any show of resistance were summarily dissolved,

so that Gertrud Bäumer and her associates quickly came to the conclusion

that, for them and for the women they felt they still had a duty to

represent, the most important thing was survival. Gertrud B5,umer

1. "Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums ", RGB, 1933 I,

7 April, 1933, pp. 175 -77.

2. More will be said about the effects of Nazi legislation on women

in professional positions in Chapter 5.

3. Gertrud Bäumer wrote to Emmy Beckmann to commiserate with her after

her own dismissal and then Emmy Beckmann's, from her position in
the Hamburg education administration, agreeing with an earlier
comment of the latter's that such a position was not just a job,
but a source of interest and pleasure. Beckmann, op. cit., letter
of 13 April, 1933, p. 49.
 36.

still believed, in April 1933, that if the middle -class women's

organisations showed docility in joining the Frauenfront,, and

sacrificed some of their leaders to whom the Nazis chiefly objected,

they would be able to carry on at least some of their former work,

having accepted the supreme leadership of the Nazi organisationl.

This mistaken belief was compounded by another: she also felt that

the Nazi women's organisation would now be cast in the role of defender

of the rights and position of women, and that a new women's movement

would develop as a reaction to the Nazis' promised restrictions on

women in public life, the professions and employment. This would be

something in which, she confided to her close friend Emmy Beckmann,

she would like to be able to participate. She maintained her optimism

on this account throughout all the vicissitudes of the summer of

2
1933 , and even in May 1934 still believed that "the new women's

movement is coming "3.

But by this time the whole edifice of the movement built up

over a period of almost seventy years had ceased to exist, and the

continued publication of the chief magazine of the BDF, Gertrud Bäumer's

Die Frau, was the only public reminder - apart from attacks on the

1. Beckmann, op. cit., pp. 50 -51.

2. Ibid.

Ibid., letter from Gertrud Bäumer to Helene König, 29 July, 1933.

BA, Kl.Erw., no. 296 -(1), letter from Gertrud Bäumer to Dorothee von
Velsen, 23 October, 1933, p. 20.

3. Beckmann, op. cit., letter from Gertrud B,umer to Helene König, 2

May, 1934, p. 68.
 37.

"women's rightists" in the Nazi press - that it had ever existed.

On 15 May, 1933, the leaders of the BDF had seen no alternative to

the dissolution of their organisation; the taking over of many of

its constituents by Nazi groups had left the BDF without a raison

d'étre, and its leaders could only advise the remaining groups to

accommodate themselves to the new order as they saw fitl. The tactic

of co- operation with the new regime did help to save one of the

feminists' most valued organisations, the Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund,

an association of professional women, but only temporarily. Although,

as Gertrud Baumer admitted in November 1934, it had declared

itself ready to make any concession necessary for survival2, it was

finally dissolved just over a year later3. By this time it was in any

case redundant, since the Nazis had established their own Reichsbund

deutscher Akademikerinnen, which was safely under the leadership of

a trusted official of the Nazi Teachers' League, Friederike Matthias4.

The dissolution of the various organisations, of a political,

vocational, religious, charitable and purely social character, was one

aspect of the change brought about in women's activities by the Nazi

assumption of power and Gleichschaltung (co- ordination) in 1933. In

1. Gertrud B unier, "'Das Haus ist zerfallen'", Die Frau, June 1933,
p. 513.

Evans, op. cit., pp. 339 -45, describes some of the events immediately
preceding the dissolution of the BDF, although he does not give
references for some of the points he makes. His outright
condemnation of the leaders of the BDF for their attempt to survive
by making concessions to the Nazis seems unduly harsh, given the
difficulty of their situation.

2. BA, Kl.Erw., no. 296 -(l), letter from Gertrud Baumer to Dorothee
von Velsen, 15 November, 1934, p. 39.

3. FK, 10c. cit.

10, p. 10.
4. "Aus dem NSLB ", Die deutsche höhere Schule, 1935, no.
 38.

addition, the establishment of a one -party State in July of that year

meant the end of what political power and influence women had had since

1918, however much it had been despised by the more militant feminists.

The fundamental Nazi insistence that women should not be involved in

politics and should not play a leading role in the party itself

naturally brought an end to female representation in the Reichstag

once the other parties had been either dissolved or outlawed. Thus,

in a way, the situation could be said to have reverted to "normal ",

since the only period in which women had been permitted to play

a full part in politics had been one of scarcely more than a decade,

and that decade or so had been a period of instability and frustration

for the majority of Germans. How much women lost in 1933 is perhaps

questionable, given the relegation of the Reichstag to purely formal

activities; but, at the same time, it was clear that all positions of

power in the State, as in the Nazi Party, were, and would remain, in

the hands of men. Gertrud Bäumer had not been wrong when she had

detected signs of feminism within the Nazis' own ranks, but she had

failed to appreciate that the exponents of feminist ideas within the

party would be eliminated as effectively from the public eye as those

outside the party had been, and given no opportunity to build up a

viable base of support.

But if women were, once again, to be denied a share in the

political affairs of the nation this did not mean that they were

also - as some had feared and others had hoped - to be excluded from

all other positions and functions outside the realm of home and

family. In the major areas of employment, higher education and the

professions, as will be shown, the wilder Nazi predictions that in

the Third Reich there would be a sharp reduction in the number of

 39.

women admitted or allowed to continue in their position were not

realised. Indeed there were some attempts to restrict women's

activities in these areas, but as the 1930s progressed, with the

build -up of an economy geared to the possibility of limited war,

women were looked to increasingly to fill vacancies for which

there was not an adequate supply of men, even in areas in which they

had not formerly been well represented. This development, which was

greatly intensified once Germany was at war, can no doubt be viewed

as a retreat from policy which had been declared "fundamental ", even

"immutable ". But simply to say that is to accept the superficial and

to fail to appreciate the essentially long-term view the Nazis

themselves had adopted. In the "thousand -year Reich" there had to

be priorities, even among basic tenets of ideology, so that apparent

inconsistencies emerge; in the long term, however, all the Nazis'

principles were supposed to be compatible. The first priority was

the securing for the "Aryan" race of an impregnable position in the

world, before which all others, including those regarding the nature

and function of women, had to give way. But it is clear that the

Nazis did expect that, once they had achieved this position, their

other policies, including the return of women to their "natural

occupations", could be implemented.

In the meantime, there were indications during the 1930s of

what this would mean. The insistence of the Nazis on the separation

of the sexes allowed, for example, the creation of Nazi organisations

for women which perhaps had little real power, but whose actual

operation was in the hands of the women themselves, thus providing

a limited amount of autonomy; this was permitted because the leadership

of the organisations showed little inclination to step out of line.

 40.

There were developments within the realm of marriage and the family

which were sometimes, in themselves, surprisingly close to what

feminists and even socialists had called for in previous decades,

although the Nazis introduced them for different motives: policy

towards the unmarried mother and the reform of the divorce law are

two examples of this. In other aspects, of course - notably the

sensitive area of abortion - the Nazi view was diametrically

opposed to what the radical feminists and the socialists had demanded.

These similarities and differences were the result of a

fundamental difference between the ideologies - using the term

loosely - of Nazis on the one hand and liberals and socialists on the

other. The latter believed that the good of the individual, within

society, was intrinsically worth pursuing, and that the State should

protect and further the interests of its citizens. The Nazis, on

the other hand, put the good of the State before the interests

of its citizens, so that the State's demands always took precedence

and the desires and needs of its citizens were, if it were found to

be necessary, sacrificed. Much of Nazi policy was conditioned by a

revulsion against the "liberal individualism" of the Weimar Republic

which, in the Nazi view, was one of the main causes of Germany's

economic, political and social problems. The desire to make Germany

great once more would therefore require the stamping out of all

vestiges of this attitude. This motive is fundamental to an

understanding of Government policy towards women, with its apparent

volte -faces at times, throughout the Nazi period.

 41.

CHAPTER TWO

Marriage and Morals

Introduction

The one factor which has, above all, determined the role of

women in society is their child -bearing function. The single or

childless married woman has found her status and opportunities to a

great extent conditioned - and at times restricted - by the fact

that most women, a small minority of them unmarried, become mothers

at some time, generally between the ages of twenty and forty. The

unmarried mother has, of course, always faced special problems

which have been more or less oppressive depending on the mores of

the society in which she has lived; for example, in some German

states after the carnage of the Thirty Years' War normally severe

attitudes towards the unmarried mother were moderated, for reasons

of population policy1. Married women with children have changed, or

perhaps developed, their aspirations radically in the last century,

chiefly as a result of the spread of contraceptive information; this

has not, however, brought to an end the resort to the crudest and

probably the oldest method of birth control, abortion. The aspirations

of women, then, and their desire to control their reproductive

capacity, clearly developed ahead of the dissemination of accurate

contraceptive advice, if perhaps not ahead of the development of

reliable contraceptives.

Given the important place of reproduction in the life of women,

it will be instructive to examine the central position of population

1. "Population policy" is used in this thesis to denote a policy designed

to encourage the raising of the birth rate; as such, it may be
proposed or espoused by a government, a party, a group, or an
individual.
 42.

problems in Germany in the 1930s, to consider the incentives to

procreate and the availability of contraceptives and abortion, and

to discuss the position of the unmarried mother. In addition, the

status of women in marriage is directly relevant to this discussion,

as also is the position of women when a divorce takes place. What

emerges from studying this area is that while it held a constant

fascination for all political parties, for the Churches, and for

feminists of all shades, it was only at the two extremes, among

Communists and Nazis, that there was - from their opposing points

of view - an obsessive single -mindedness.

To the German Communists in the 1920s and early 1930s,

population policy was a nationalistic, capitalist irrelevance, another

means of using the working class in a way which brought them only

misery. The KPD therefore campaigned vigorously for the right of the

individual to limit his - or, more important, her - reproductive

capacity to any extent and by any means. The Nazi view was that the

nation needed children, and so children must be provided; any incentive

was justifiable, as also was the removal of all means of limiting

reproduction. This last point immediately created some common ground

between the Nazis and the Churches, and heightened the latter's

already implacable antagonism towards the KPD, although later Nazi

policies brought strong criticism from the Roman Catholic Church.

But there were also similarities between the policies of Nazi Germany

and Soviet Russia, from 1936 onwards, as the latter felt the need to

encourage population growth on a rapid and massive scale in view of

the high rate of mortality as a result of war, civil war, famine and

disease, followed by the increasing international tension of the 1930s.

 43.

A. The Birth Rate and Population Policy

As women began to reject in the later nineteenth century the

inevitability of frequent child-bearing in marriage, this, combined

with generally vague ideas about emancipation, led to a slowing down

of the birth rate after the abnormally high level of the 1870s and,

to a lesser extent, the 1880s and 1890s. Although an unprecedentedly

large number of children was born in the first decade of the

twentieth century, with the figure around the two million mark every

year, the actual rate of births, in relation to the size of the

population, was declining steadily, and began to decline sharply from

early in that decade into the war years1. In addition to their own

personal desire no longer to be cast in the role of child -bearing

machine (Gebarmaschine), women had sometimes chosen, sometimes been

compelled for financial reasons, to continue or to resume working

outside the home after marriage, particularly from the 1870s. And

there was a growing awareness that a few children could be afforded

a better start in life, while a large family could mean long-term

poverty and poor prospects for the children. The limitation of

families was a deliberate choice, which the development of more

1. The following table illustrates this development:

Average no. of live Live births per 1,000
Period births per year of the population

1871-80 1,674,843 39
1881-90 1,732,015 37
1891-1900 1,960,296 36
1901-10 1,997,364 33
1911-14 1,849,428 28

Calculated from figures in St.J.; 1911, p. 22; 1933, p. 27; 1934

p. 27.
 44.

reliable contraceptives in the later nineteenth century made a real

possibility

While there had been growing official concern at the decline

in the birth rate before the Great War, there was much more willingness

to discuss population policy, and sexual matters generally, in the

more liberal atmosphere of the Weimar Republic. More than that, the

huge losses in the war and at the peace settlement, as well as the

disastrous slump in the war -time birth ratel, made the formulation of

a positive population policy highly desirable, even, some thought,

essential. The problem was heightened by the increase in the surplus

of women in the population, from about 800,000 before the war to

about 2.8 million after it, as a direct result of military casualties3;

many potential mothers would not be able to find a husband, and

while unmarried motherhood remained socially unacceptable this meant

that the birth rate was likely to continue to decline.

It was, in any case, precisely the more liberal climate which

brought two basic elements into conflict: the general desire, on the

part of conservatives, liberals and Social Democrats alike, to

1. K. M. Bolte and Dieter Kappe, Struktur and Entwicklung der

Bevf3lkerung, Opladen, 1964, pp. 30 -31.

J. Peel, "The Manufacturing and Retailing of Contraceptives in

England ", Population Studies, 1963 -64, p. 117.

2. The birth rate dropped to around 14 live births per 1,000

inhabitants in 1917 and 1918, i.e. to half of the already diminished
pre -war level. Figures from St.J., 1933, p. 27.

3. The population of Germany by sex in 1910 and in October 1919 (i.e.

after the surrender of territory at the Peace Settlement) was as
follows:

1910 1919

men 32,040,166 29,011,216

women 32,885,827 31,887,368
Figures from St.J.: 1919, p. 1; 1920, p. 1.
 45.

reverse the decline in the birth rate and encourage a much higher

rate of population growth was not altogether compatible with the

support of liberals and socialists for demands that the Draconian

abortion law be mitigated, or even repealed, and that contraceptive

advice be made freely available. The result of this conflict of

interests was that the 1920s went by - with the birth rate declining

steeply and steadily back to the war-time level after the transient

post-war revival1 - without any serious attempt being made by

governments to formulate a national population policy2. This made

Weimar politicians an easy prey for the National Socialists, who

claimed that they were standing idly by while the German nation died

out.

But there was a Reichstag Population Policy Committee, on which

Gertrud Baumer was the DDP's representative3, and at last in January

1930 Severing, as Reich Minister of the Interior, demonstrated his

concern by calling a conference to discuss the problem and to try to

find possible remedies. The result was a national Standing Committee

on Population Policy, which at its meetings discussed proposals for

tax incentives to encourage procreation, protection for the pregnant

woman and special care for infants. The guiding principle was to be

"protection and aid for women who want children", so that the pro-

natalist motive was encouraged but not aggressively propagated.

1. The birth rate rose to between 20 and 25 for the years 1919 -25, but
then dropped every year, to reach 15 in 1932. Figures from St.J.,
loc. cit.
2. Bolte and Kappe, op. cit., p. 44.

3. HA, reel 37, fol. 736, "Mitteilungen des Reichsfrauenausschusses

der DDP ", no. 5, 11 August, 1929.
 46.

Clearly, this was a real attempt to resolve the conflict between

the growing individual desire to limit families and the national

need for more children. The formula was also sufficiently undefined

so that the political and ideological differences between the groups

favouring a population policy would not prevent the search for a

solution1.

The finding of a solution was becoming particularly urgent,

since the renewed decline in the birth rate in the later 1920s had

come at a time when the number of women of child -bearing age had

actually been steadily increasing2. According to an official

report, even worse was in store: it was estimated that there would

be a continued rise in the number of marriages - and therefore, it

was hoped, also in the number of births - until 1935, but there would

then be a decline as the generation of the lean war -time years of

birth reached the age at which they were most likely to marry and

reproduce; thus, from the later 1930s an even sharper decline in the

birth rate could be expected3.

In the absence of a national population policy, the parties

were active in devising their own policies. The women's committee of

the DDP, for example, drew up a document which, it hoped, would form

the basis for discussions in the party's local groups. The central

point of concern was less the size than the quality of the population,

quality in "biological, social and mental" terms, which was to be

achieved by positive means including improved social welfare and the

1. "Reichsausschuss für Bevölkerungsfragen ", AfB, 1931, pp. 62 -65.

2. Information from figures in St.J., 1932, p. 29.

3. Report in WuS, 1930, no. 24, p. 972.

 47.

encouragement of physical education in schools. Negative measures,

such as the discouragement of certain categories of people from

procreating, were not mentioned. The DDP women were characteristically

moderate, favouring tax reform to encourage large families but

opposing the more blatant artificial incentives - which the Nazis would

offer - which might be striven for per se, without a genuine desire

for more children1.

Moderation was also shown by a writer in the DVP's Women's

Review, who put Germany's declining birth rate in its European

perspective: the other countries of northern Europe, as well as

Switzerland and the United States, she pointed out, were experiencing

a similar trend; and the decline was less disastrous than might at

first appear, she continued, since it was partially offset by the lower

mortality rate among infants and children in the 1920s, as a result

of medical advance and improved hygiene2. Nevertheless, the low

birth rates in the countries of northern and western Europe were a

source of general anxiety, not least in Britain, particularly in

relation to the rapidly growing populations of eastern European

countries3. But it was only the Nazis in Germany who saw this as a

1. BA, 845111/43, Reichsfrauenausschux der DDP, "Grundsatze einer

deutschen Bevälkerungspolitik ", 23 April, 1930, pp. 52-54.

2. BA, R4511/64, Frauenrundschau, 25 February, 1932, "Zerfall der

Familie ? ", p. 1133.

The decline in the incidence of infant mortality in Germany was as

follows: in 1905, 20% of babies born alive died in infancy; in
1913 the figure was 15%; in 1930 it was 8.5%. The rate was always
higher among illegitimate than among legitimate children. Figures
from St.J.: 1934, p. 48; 1935, p. 56.

3. "Internationaler Kongress fair Bevölkerungswissenschaft" Der

offentliche Gesundheitsdienst, 5 December, 1935, pp. 645 -80.
 48.

real threat to the west's future, and to Germany, with her strategic

position in the centre of Europe, particularly.

Continuing concern about the birth rate contributed to the

intensification of interest in the health and care of pregnant women

and mothers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The sickness

insurance funds now provided hospital treatment and maternity benefit

for women members and female dependants of members, and in 1925 the

Central Union of German Sickness Insurance Funds opened a research

institute for the study of women's diseases. This was in part a

response to the increase in the number of women members of insurance

funds in the 1920s, a reflection of women's regarding employment as

a long -term rather than a temporary activity. The strain which

full -time employment put on married women was reflected in the

"remarkable increase in the frequency of illness during the years

of sexual activity "1. This was a source of deep concern, as was the

possible deleterious effect on young girls' reproductive capacity

of employment in unhealthy occupations2. Standards of hygiene in

childbirth were also criticised, and the more thorough training of

doctors and midwives in the conduct of a confinement and post -natal

care were warmly recommended3. But proposals that the Government

itself make financial provision for expectant and nursing mothers

1. Franz Goldmann and Alfred Grotjahn, "The German Sickness

Insurance Funds ", ILO Studies and Reports, Series M, no. 8,
Geneva, 1928, pp. 40-42, 64.

2. Hugo Sellheim in AfPr, 1931 -32, p. 189.

3. "Bericht doer die 22. Tagung der deutschen Gesellschaft für

Gynakologie, Frankfurt-am-Main, 27.- 30.V.1931 ", AfFr, 1931 -32,
pp. 156 -57.
 49.

came to nothingl; the Government was in no mood to incur new

commitments when it could barely meet existing ones in the depression.

The Nazis, as strong pro -natalists, proceeded in this matter

in more single-minded fashion. In June 1935 a law was prepared for

the provision of improved maternity benefit and post -natal care;

characteristically, it was to be the insurance funds, and not the

State, which would shoulder the burden of extra expenditure2. In

addition, the various midwives' organisations were centralised into

one national association, and their education and professional status

improved3. There was, similarly, the centralisation of all maternity

advice centres into the "Mother and Child" branch of the Nazi welfare

organisation, the NSV. Its bureaux provided care and assistance, in

co- operation with the local health offices, and gave advice on, and

even sometimes aid for, financial problems. Homes were provided

for single women, "to serve the campaign against abortion ", and in

1935 Frick, the Minister of the Interior, ordered that every pregnant

woman should attend an advisory centre4, no doubt to prevent or detect

any resort to abortion, and to try to ensure that every desirable

pregnancy was noted and supervised. It was claimed in mid -1938 that

1. BA, 82/18554, Reichstag motions of 22 November, 1930, and 15 October,

1931.

2. BA, R2/18554, letters from Seldte to Lammers, 8 June, 1935 and

from Schwerin von Krosigk to Seldte, 20 June, 1935.

3. BA, R36/1884, correspondence for 1934.

Ibid., letters from the Governor of East Prussia to the Deutscher

Gemeindetag, 3 March, 1937, and vice -versa, 11 March, 1937.

4. Egon Parrensteiner, "Schwangerenflrsorge und Geburt", doctoral

dissertation for Rostock University, 1939, p. 7.
 50.

the NSV had 25,000 advice centres in its "Mother and Child section"

throughout the country, and that more than ten million women had so

far attended them1.

The Nazis liked to boast about their achievements in improving

maternity services and child care; it cannot be disputed that they did

indeed make progress in this field - for good, "Aryan" citizens who

were sound in mind and body, and for them only. Anxiety at the

rising number of premature births in the mid- 1930s, and the high rate

of mortality connected with them suggested that the care afforded by

the NSV was not fully adequate, and so the Hebammengesetz (Midwives'

Law) was passed in 1938. This stated that "every German woman has

the right to the assistance of a midwife ", and "every pregnant

woman has the duty to call in a midwife promptly "3. Nazi anxiety

about the well -being of women before and during childbirth was simply

based on the needs of the State, as they saw them: healthy parents

were more likely to have healthy children, and strong children would

make healthy parents for the next generation. In this context woman

was indeed, as one writer put it, "arbiter over the life and death of

her nation "4. Further, she was seen not merely as a child- bearing

machine - as the Nazis' opponents claimed - but as the "first educator

1. BA, NSD17 /RAK, July 1938, "Deutschlands Kinderschutz vorbildlich:"

pp. 1 -2.

2. Josef Brunn- Schulte-Wissing, "Die Frühgeburten - ihr Lebensschicksal

in den ersten zehn Tagen und ihre bev8lkerungspolitische Bedeutung ",
doctoral dissertation for Rostock University, 1937, p. 13.

Karl Heinz Grasshoff, "Das Schicksal der häuslichen Frühgeburten

und ihre bev8lkerungspolitische Bedeutung ", doctoral dissertation
for Rostock University, 1937, p. 9.

3. "Hebammengesetz ", RGB, 1938 I, 21 December, 1938, pp. 1893 -96.

4. Eva Kriner- Fischer, Die Frau als Richterin liber Leben und Tod
ihres Volkes, Berlin, 1937, pp. 3, 12 -13.
 51.

of the new generation"l, the person responsible for the healthy

upbringing of her children, in both physical and moral terms, to be

valuable citizens and parents2. This was perhaps a hazardous

situation for a dictatorship to encourage; the Nazis had therefore

to encourage women to bear children, and also to give them a feeling

of self- importance which would breed gratitude towards the regime

which had, apparently, upgraded the status of mothers in the family

and in society.

The first positive incentive to procreation came with the

introduction of the Marriage Loan scheme, as part of the "Law to

Reduce Unemployment" of 1 June, 1933. This provided that a couple

intending to marry would be given a tax -free loan of up to RM 1,0003

- in vouchers for household goods, not cash - to help them to set up

house at this difficult time. Repayment was to be at the rate of

if per month, and was to begin three months after the loan had been

made. The money for the loans was to be raised from a tax on all

single persons - except those with children - who were eligible to

pay income tax, at a rate of between 2% and 5% of their income,

according to its size4. Within three weeks it was further decreed

1. Annemarie Bechem, "Die deutsche Mutter als Erzieherin ", NS-

Frauenwarte, April 1937, pp. 695 -96.

2. Erich Siegel, Die Deutsche Frau im Rasseerwachen, Munich, 1934,

pp. 16 -17.

3. BA, NSD17 /RAK, November 1936, Werner Htittig, "Massnahmen zur

Steigerung der deutschen Bev8lkerungszahl", p. 3, states that the
average amount of the loans made so far had been RM600.

Bry, op. cit., pp. 457 -60, gives the average weekly earnings of
women in 22 industries in 1936 as ranging between RM15 and R1á27
per week; the average marriage loan therefore was equivalent to
between about six and ten times the average monthly wage for these
women, although it would be less attractive to, say, female bank
employees, whose average monthly earnings in February 1934 were
RM176, according to St.J., 1934, p. 278.

4. "Gesetz zur Verminderung der Arbeitslosigkeit", RGB, 1933 I,

June, 1933, pp. 326 -29.
 52.

that the birth of a child would lead to the cancellation of 25% of

the loan repayments, and to a moratorium of one year on repayments

after the birthl. Thus, the childless were to be penalised for

not contributing to population growth, while loan-holders were to be

encouraged to have a child as quickly as possible, and to follow

that one with three more in a short space of time in order to have

the maximum possible of the repayments cancelled. Dorothee von Velsen

described in 1939 how a neighbour had said to her, in a broad accent,

"so now I just need another baby and I shan't have to pay back any

more "2. This was the conclusion the Government hoped its "Aryan ",

healthy, "politically reliable" citizens would draw; those who did

not fit this description were, naturally, excluded from this scheme

for state -supported marriage and procreation3.

The marriage -loan scheme was reasonably popular, although the

majority of couples either did not fall into the relevant categories

or did not make application for a loan. The fact that the wife was

required to give up work4 was undoubtedly a deterrent to many. In

the last four months of 1933, when the scheme was first operational,

37% of the marriages contracted were loan- aided, with an above -

average figure in Prussia and a lower than average figure in Bavaria,

1. "Durchführungsverordnung über die Gewährung von Ehestandsdarlehen

(ED-DVO) ", RGB, 1933 I, 20 June, 1933, p. 379.

2. BA, K1.Erw., 296 -(1), letter from Dorothee von Velsen to Gertrud
Bäumer, 10 March, 1939, P. 55.

3. RGB, op. cit., p. 377.

"2. DVO über die Gewährung von Ehestandsdarlehen", RGB, 1933 I,

26 July, 1933, P. 540.

4. "Gesetz zur Verminderung der Arbeitslosigkeit", RGB, 1933 I, 1

June, 1933, pp. 326 -27.
 53.

a relative position which continued for some years1. Part of the

reason for this difference was probably the fact that in agricultural

Bavaria working wives were not in the category where they could be

replaced by paid labour, as in industry; it would not have been

worthwhile for a small farmer to pay a wage to a male labourer, hired

to replace his wife who had retired, in order to obtain a loan. The

revoking of the prohibition on the employment of the wife in a loan-

aided marriage in the autumn of 19372 resulted in a sharp rise in the

number of applications for loans, in both absolute and relative terms,

so that in 1939 42% of all marriages contracted were assisted by loans,

the highest percentage since the scheme began3, and a marked revival

from the nadir of 24%, the figure for 19354.

Two other factors helped to increase the popularity of the

marriage -loan scheme in 1939: the relaxation of the restrictions

on marriage at the end of Augusts and the outbreak of war immediately

after together led to an increase in hastily- contracted marriages,

for a large number of which loan applications were made6. The

1. Information from St.J.: 1936, p. 42; 1937, P. 44; 1938, p. 48.

2. "Drittes Gesetz zur tnderung des Gesetzes über die Förderung der
Eheschliessungen ", RGB, 1937 I, 3 November, 1937, pp. 1158 -59.

3. BA, NSD30/1836, Informationsdienst..., November 1938, "Ehestands -

darlehen in der neuesten Statistik ".

Report in VPuS, 1942, no. 2, p. 52.

4. St.J., 1936, p. 42.

5. "Verordnung zur Durchführung des Gesetzes zur Verhtttung erbkranken

Nachwuchses und des Ehegesundheitsgesetzes ", RGB, 1939 I, 31
August, 1939, pp. 1560 -61. More will be said about this in section
B of this chapter.

6. Wu7, loc. cit.

 54.

outbreak of war also led to requests for a moratorium on loan

repayments by conscripts, since the burden of making them was

bearing heavily on those receiving only their army pay. To help to

spin out the loan, it was also suggested that the stipulation that

only new furniture could be bought with the loan vouchers be

rescinded since, in any case, industry could not supply the demand

and already had indefinite waiting lists of customers1.

The national women's organisation, the Deutsches Frauenwerk

(DFW) saw the marriage -loan scheme as a possible means of winning

more recruits to the courses of instruction it provided in domestic

science and child care from 19342, but it was not until March 1937

that formal provision was made for this. Then, it was decreed that

part of the marriage loan could be used to pay the fees for such a

course3. One motive for this was the desire to educate women to

economise at a time when Germany's resources - for domestic expenditure

- were restricted4. As an added incentive to marriage -loan applicants

to exercise this option, the Minister of Finance at the same time

announced that the amount of the loan could be increased by RM 100

to cover the fees for the course and still leave the full amount of a

normal loan for household purchases5, an offer which received a warm

1. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750356, BziL, 29 November, 1939.

2. BA, NSD30/1836, Informationsdienst..., December 1938, "Mütter-

schulung und Ehestandsdarlehen", p. 50.

3. "7. DVO über die Gewährung von Ehestandsdarlehen ", RGB, 1937 I,
10 March, 1937, p. 292.

4. HA, reel 13, fol. 253, Reichsfrauenführung Abteilung Volkswirt-

schaft /Hauswirtschaft, "Rundschreiben Fff 62/37 ", 4 July, 1937.

5. IfZ, MA 388, frame 726438, Reich Ministry of Finance, order of

29 September, 1937.
 55.

welcome in the section of the DFW which ran the courses'.

The main purpose of the marriage loan scheme was, of course,

the raising of the birth rate, and loud boasts were made about

the success achieved in this direction. At the 1936 Party Rally

Reinhardt, the Secretary of State whose brainchild the scheme was,

announced that so far 620,000 marriages had been assisted by loans,

and that already 425,000 children had been born to these marriages.

Nevertheless, he went on to warn that these children were very

largely the first -born in their family, and that at least another

three children would have to follow each of them if the scheme was

to be really worthwhile2. He still showed optimism in the following

year when he claimed that now 550,000 children had been born to loan -

aided marriages, which was, he said, proportionately twice as many as

to the other marriages contracted during the same period3. But still

in 1938 it was reported that up to June of that year almost one million

loans had been made altogether, and 840,000 children born to achieve

partial cancellation of them4. This was, indeed, a considerable

rise in births compared with the previous year, but hardly an impressive

figure considering that the scheme had been in operation for almost

five years.

Allowing for the natural time -lag of nine months between

conception and birth, so that a proportion of the loans made by any

1. HA, op. cit., Reichsfrauenführung Abteilung Reichsmütterdienst,

"Rundschreiben FW 92/37 ", 6 October, 1937. More will be said
about the DFW and the Reichsmtitterdienst in chapter 6.

2. BA, NSD17 /RAK, November 1936, Werner Htittig, "Massnahmen zur

Steigerung der deutschen Bevölkerungszahl ", p. 3.

3. Ibid., July 1937, Fritz Reinhardt, "Deutschland treibt Familien-

politik", p. 2.

4. BA, NSD30/1836, Informationsdienst..., November 1938, "Ehestands -

darlehen in der neuesten Statistik ", p. 14.
 56.

given time could not have been partially cancelled by a birth, the

impression remains that, on average, only one child was being born to

each couple who had received a loan; for most people, the incentive

of partial cancellation of the loan for each child was clearly not

sufficient to encourage large families quickly. The granting of a

loan could not disguise the fact that children would be a long-term

financial burden. The number of births to couples in receipt of loans

did rise, as a proportion of all live births, from a modest 11% in

1934 to 17.5% in 1937, and to 20.5% in 1939. In the first full year

of the war, the figure rose even further, to 22°0. But with loan-

aided marriages on the whole constituting over 30iä of all marriages

from autumn 1933, and over 40% at the end of the decade, it is obvious

that the marriage -loan scheme failed to have the sharp impact on the

birth rate which had been anticipated when it was introduced in 1933.

The marriage -loan scheme was only one tactic used to try to

provide incentives to Germans to have large families. Other schemes

were based on either direct cash benefits or the elevation of mothers

to the status of national heroines, or a combination of both. It was

reported in March 1934, for example, that the local authorities in

Darmstadt were already making rent rebates to large families and were

now proposing to issue cards to their 1,500 mothers with three or more

children which would allow them to go to the theatre free of charge on

certain evenings2. This set an example to other authorities, so that

in Camburg, near Halle, it was announced that the twenty -four large

1. Figures from St.J.: 1936, p. 42; 1938, p. 48; 1939/40, p. 53;

1941/42, p. 75.

2. "Theaterfreiplätze für kinderreiche Mütter ", FZ, 6 March, 1934.

 57.

families in the area would have to pay only half of the normal water

rate; it was hoped, in addition, to charge them half price for the

use of electricity1. On the other side, the V8 lkischer Beobachter

announced that Honour Cards were to be presented to all mothers with

at least three children under the age of ten. The cards were to carry

on the reverse a request to all offices and shops to give the holder

preferential treatment, while on the front there would be a picture of

a mother surrounded by small children with the legend: "The most

beautiful name the world over is Mother"2.

The exhortation seems not to have had the desired effect,

however, since there were complaints from parents that preferential

treatment was often not being given to large families and to mothers

with small children in shops and offices. The chief offenders seem

to have been the Government's own departments, since it was claimed

that parents were often told at Employment Exchanges or at welfare

offices that having several children was not a satisfactory reason

for receiving special treatment. The order therefore went out again

that it was the duty of every civil servant who dealt with those in

need of aid or advice to discriminate in favour of those with large

families3. Three or four children were considered more or less

sufficient for the term "large family ", although, it was constantly

stressed, this sort of figure should in no way be considered an upper

1. Report in FZ, 28 September, 1934.

2. "Ehrenkarte für Mütter ", VB, 18 November, 1934.

3. "Bevorzugte Behandlung Kinderreicher", Fränkische Tageszeitun,

5 November, 1934.
 58.

limit; after all, for every childless marriage the nation needed

a family of six or more children by way of compensation, if the

declining birth rate of the previous twenty years was to be

reversed and made good. The Nazis' real aim was to achieve a

return to the large family of the later nineteenth century, so that

Germany could return to the prosperity and expansion which had

accompanied the high birth rate of that periodi.

The concessions made to large families, and especially to

their mothers, by local authorities had the twin virtues of costing

the central government nothing, while furthering its policy, and

providing favourable propaganda. They could not, however, be a real

substitute for direct governmental action in the Nazi State to

achieve the desideratum of national uniformity. Accordingly, the

first general measure came in September 1935, with the provision that

large families should receive a bonus from the funds accumulated for

the marriage -loan scheme, if they applied for it2. The conditions

were that the family should have four or more children under sixteen

living in the parental home and that - in addition to the now

inevitable clauses pertaining to "racial health" and physical and mental

fitness - the family be in financial straits3. It was claimed that up

to the end of 1935 alone, as a result of Germany's stronger economic

position, about 300,000 children benefited from the bonus, which

1. "Aufruf des Ehrenführringes des Reichsbundes der Kinderreichen ",

VB, 12 December, 1935.

2. "Verordnung über die Gewährung von Kinderbeihilfen an kinder-

reiche Familien ", RGB, 1935 I, 15 September, 1935, p. 1160.

3. "Durchführungsbestimmungen zur Verordnung über die Gewährung von

Kinderbeihilfen an kinderreiche Familien ", RGB, 1935 I, 26 September,
1935, p. 1206.
 59.

amounted to RM 100 for each child'. Then, in March 1936, it was

announced that, instead, large families should be afforded recurrent

State support2; and further benefits followed in the next few years3.

The financial incentives had to be accompanied by a propaganda

campaign to try to persuade women, particularly, that large families

were not - as the liberals of the 1920s were alleged to have insisted

- "stupid and needy"4, although the Nazis did have to admit, at least

privately, that there were large families which were "anti -social"

which, naturally enough, were not to be supported by the States.

The propaganda aspects of the incentives to women to procreate

particularly commended themselves to the Government since they were

inexpensive . Accordingly, there was a campaign to elevate

motherhood to a position of the highest esteem in the nation. The

Nazis had already turned Mother's Day - a moveable feast generally held

1. Wilfrid Bade, "Der Weg des Dritten Reiches ", Lübeck, 1936, P. 14.

2. "Verordnung zur Anderung der Verordnung fiber die Gewahrung von

Kinderbeihilfen an kinderreiche Familien ", RGB, 1936 I, 24 March,
1936, p. 252.

3. E.g., "Ausbildungsbeihilfen fUr Kinderreiche Familien ", Alfred

Homeger, Die Neuordnun: des höheren Schulwesens im Dritten Reich,
Berlin, 1943, p. F6.

4. Report in NS- Frauenwarte, 1936 -37, p. 730.

5. BDC, Slg.Sch., 212, Kreisleitung Marktheidenfeld-Karlstadt,

"Rundschreiben an alle Ortsgruppenleiter der NSDAP ", 24 January,
1941.

6. Nowhere was this more clearly demonstrated than in the Nazis'

taking over of the Reichsbund der Kinderreichen to act as a
propaganda organisation. All "racially pure" parents of four
children were encouraged to become full members, while those with
three could have probationary status. But the RdK gave no aid
to large families; these were merely to be gathered together as
good examples for the rest of the nation to emulate. See BDC,
Slg. Sch., 212, particularly, on this. Reasons of space prevent
a fuller treatment of the RdK here, although it is mentioned
briefly in section C of this chapter.
 60.

about May 10th - into a festival of national celebration of "how

fine and noble it is to be a mother, and how wonderful a thing it is

to have a mother ", as Frick sentimentally put it in his message for

the appropriate day in 19351. Hitler made periodic references to the

importance of motherhood in speeches which were designed to refute

foreign propaganda about the "enslavement" of women in Nazi Germany

as well as to encourage German women to fulfil their own instinctive

desires, as well as the nation's needs, by having children. At the

1935 Party Rally he made his famous remark "The woman, too, has her

battlefield ", the battle being that of the birth- ratet, while two

years later, again at Nuremberg, he spoke thus:

"If to -day a female lawyer achieves great things

and nearby there lives a mother with five, six, seven
children, all of them healthy and well brought up, then I
would say: from the point of view of the eternal benefit
to our people the woman who has borne and brought up
children and who has therefore given our nation life in the
future, has achieved more and done more: "3

This was, in fact, a two -pronged attack, since Hitler's opposition

to the practice of law by women had only a month earlier been

demonstrated in an order restricting it4.

The Honour Cards issued in 1934 to prolific mothers were, it

transpired, only the first step in providing symbols of the esteem in

1. "Reichsminister Dr. Frick zum Muttertag am 12. Mai ", VB, 11 May,
1935.

2. Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden and Proklamationen, 1932 -45, Würzburg,

1962, vol. 1, p. 531.

3. BA, NSD17/RAR, October 1936, "Der Führer Adolf Hitler über die
Aufgaben der deutschen Frau", p. 1.

4. For a full discussion of this see chapter 5.

 61.

which the nation held its mothers. At the end of 1938 it was

announced that on Mother's Day in 1939 three million prolific

mothers of good "Aryan" stock would be presented with the new Honour

Cross of the German Mother by Party notables. The legend on the

reverse of the cross was to be: "The child ennobles the Mother: "1.

Hess explained that mothers of good character who had at least four

children were eligible for the cross, which would be awarded in three

grades, according to the actual number of children2. How far this

development prompted the institution of the Order of Glorious

Motherhood in the Soviet Union in 1944 for particularly fecund women

and, similarly, as one of a number of incentives at this time to

encourage rapid population growth3, is uncertain, but the parallel

is indeed striking.

In their anxiety to promote procreation, and to avoid excessive

Government expenditure in the process, the Nazis went to lengths which

can only be considered absurd. Presenting an Honour Cross to prolific

mothers was perhaps peculiar, but positively eccentric was the order

that members of the Hitler Youth must salute women wearing the cross4.

No doubt it was intended to impress on the young that these women were

living examples of what they should themselves aim to achieve, in

1. "Das Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter ", VB, 25 December, 1938.

2. "Welche Mutter erhält das Ehrenkreuz ", VB, 27 December, 1938.

BA, NSD3/5, Verfügungen, Anordnungen, Bekanntgaben, vol. 1, "A.

37/39 vom 15.2.39 - Verleihung des Ehrenkreuzes der deutschen
Mutter. Merkblatt für die Auslese der Mutter, die...vorgeschlagen
werden sollen ", p. 346.

3. Schlesinger, op. cit., pp. 371 -72.

4. BA, NSD17/RAK, June 1939, "Ehrenkreuz für kinderreiche deutsche

Mütter ", p. 3.
 62.

addition to enhancing the national esteem for mothers in a demonstrable

way. And certainly Himmler saw this kind of activity as both

valuable and right. In August 1940 he told Kersten, his masseur:

"After the war we'll have an entirely new system of

honours and titles.... The Mothers' Cross is the best of
all; one day it'll be the greatest honour in Greater
Germany. Sentries will have to present arms to a woman
with the Mothers' Cross in gold.... You'll find that a
delegation of women with the Mothers' Cross will have
precedence on parade over the FUhrer's bodyguard - and
just consider the effect of that: "1

Part of the motive for all this was, of course, the immediate need

in war time to raise the spirits of German women when they had a

husband or son at the front, in danger of losing his life. As he

awarded a new batch of Honour Crosses in October 1939, Hess extolled

the mothers, thanking them for giving Germany their children,

paying special tribute to those who were mourning the death of a

son in the field. His purpose was, however, to strengthen their will

to accept whatever the Government might demand of them in the future,

and it was to this end that his flattery and encouragement were

primarily directed2.

The measure of the success of all the encouragement and

incentives given to promote procreation was to be found in the trend

in the birth rate after 1933. At first, certainly, it seemed

encouraging, with apparent endorsement of Nazi policies as early as

possible, in 1934: the nadir of 59 live births per 1,000 women of

child- bearing age in 1933 was followed by a dramatic rise to a

1. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs 1940 -1945, London, 1956, p. 54.

2. BA, op.cit., October 1939, Rudolf Hess, "Das Mutterkreuz ist

das Ehrenzeichen der Heimatfront der deutschen Frauen ", p. 4.
 63.
figure of 73 in 1934 and 77 in each of the following three years, and

in 1938-40 the figures were as high as 81, 85 and 84, respectively

That this upward trend was achieved by persuading married couples to

procreate is illustrated by the continuing decline in the incidence of

illegitimate births, in the years 1933-39, at any rate2. But the rise

in the birth rate was, if encouraging, much less spectacular than the

Nazis had hoped to achieve, and than their propaganda boasted. Indeed,

in comparison with the abnormally low birth rate of the late 1920s

and early 1930s the years after 1933 showed a marked improvement; but

they failed to match even the 1922 figure of 90 births per 1,000

women of child - bearing age, far less the 1910/11 rate of 128 which,

coming at a time when the birth rate had already been steadily

falling, must have been the minimum the Nazis hoped to achieve3. No

doubt the imbalance between the sexes in the age -group most likely to

provide parents contributed to the failure to achieve a better result;

but with an increase in the marriage rate after 1933 it seems as if

couples were deliberately choosing to have small families4.

Indeed the 1934 -39 birth rate showed a marked improvement over

that for the years 1929 -33; but the comparison between these two

periods - which the Nazis liked to make - is hardly valid, given the

economic recession in 1928 followed by the effects of the depression

1. Figures from St.J.: 1932, p. 29; 1938, P 47; 1941/42, P. 77.

2. This will be discussed in section D of this chapter.

3. Figures from St.J., 1933, p. 32.

4. The marriage rate rose from 7.9 marriages per 1,000 of the population
in 1932 to 9.7 in 1933 and 11.2 in 1934. From 1935-38 it fluctuated
between 9.1 and 9.7, again reaching 11.2 in 1939. Figures from
1941/42, p. 66.
St.J.: 1934, P 27; 1937, P. 37; 1939/40, P. 42;
 64.

from 1929. It is clear that the political stability which the

Nazis brought, in spite of the repression, and the economic

revival in the 1930s, although there was not actual prosperity,

were factors which created a climate in which potential parents

felt more secure, and therefore more inclined to bring children

into the world. But the continued use of contraceptives and the

continuing resort to abortion during the 1930s1 suggests that the

encouragement and the incentives were not sufficient to persuade

people to have several children. Women had increasingly become

accustomed to being able to choose the size of their family, and

were, on the whole, not convinced by propaganda designed to

portray a lifetime devoted to child-bearing and rearing - probably

covering the life of a woman from twenty to fifty-five, or from

twenty-five to sixty - as idyllic. The discovery by women before

the war, intensified by experience after it, that the female of the

species, too, could have aspirations outside the home and family,

could not be reversed. Even if women were not obliged to work and

did not want to work after marriage and the birth of children, the

sole alternative was not bringing up a large family, but rather having

few children in a short space of time and enjoying a more independent

social life outside the home, and more leisure generally2.

1. This will be discussed in section C of this chapter.

2. Hermann Ahrens, "Untersuchungen zur Soziologie der Familie in

systematischer Absicht ", doctoral dissertation for Rostock
University, 1931, pp. 88 -97.
 65.
B. Marriage and Divorce

The Great War and its losses brought about a deep change in

the social and economic position of women, which had a profound

effect on the marriage relationship. There were other factors, too:

the inflation, the greater employment of women, the liberal atmosphere

which had led, in the first flush of enthusiasm, to licence, all had

an impact on the attitudes with which people entered marriage, and

made the provisions of the Civil Code look really out of date.

Indeed, by no means everyone was persuaded that the new values were

right; Schwabach wrote about the emancipated woman, but emphasised

that this term was relevant only "in the context of middle -class

society ", with little meaning for working-class women1. But if the

"new morality ", vividly described by Stefan Zweig, touched only a

small minority of the population, it was nevertheless important

because of the reactions it generated. The experimenting with the

marriage relationship, for example with trial marriage and companionate

marriage, the higher rate of divorce in the post -war than in the pre-

war years3, and the greater emphasis on sexual satisfaction for both

1. E. E. Schwabach, Revolutionierung der Frau, Leipzig, 1928, p. 132.

2. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, London, 1943, pp. 238 -39.

3. The following table illustrates this point:

Year No. of divorces No. per 100,000 inhabitants

1913 17,835 26.6

1920 36,542 59.1
1923 33,939 55.0
1929 39,424 61.6
1932 42,202 65.o

Figures from St.J.: 1924/25, p. 51; 1926, P. 37; 1934, p. 50.

 66.

partners, caused uneasiness among moderate feminists like Katharina

von Kardorff1, while giving rise to nothing short of alarm in both

Churches and among the basically conservative majority in the middle

class.

By 1930 many different groups believed marriage and family life

to be in crisis. The conservatives saw them as under fire from the

permissive society of the Republic; the Communists and radical

feminists regarded the bourgeois conception of marriage as irreconcilable

with both reality and social justice; the Nazis claimed that the

"system" was destroying marriage and the family unit2. A more sober

writer came firmly to the conclusion that the family as an institution

was perfectly sound, although many families were struggling for

existence in the depression3. In spite of the imbalance between the

sexes, with war casualties depriving many young women of a partner,

the marriage rate in the later 1920s was actually slightly higher than

it had been just before the war, so that marriage seemed as popular

as ever, even in the worst years of the depression4.

In spite of the changes which had taken place in the position of

women in and after the Great War, the legal basis of marriage described

1. BA, Nachlass Katharina von Kardorff, no. 34a, "Papst contra Frau? ",
1931, p. 92.

2. Käthe Braun -Prager, review of Rosa Mayreder, Die Krisis der Ehe,
FiS, November 1929, p. 12.

Karl Fiehler, "Sozialgesetzgebung ", Nationalsozialistisches

Jahrbuch, 1927, pp. 122 -23.

3. Anneliese Kasten, "Frau, Familie, Staat ", AfFr, 1932, no. 4, P. 280.

4. In each of the last few years before the Great War there had been
about 7.7 marriages per 1,000 of the population; in the years 1927 -
31 a rate of 8 or 9 was consistently maintained, and even in 1932
the figure was 7.9. Figures from St.J.: 1920, p. 28; 1930,
p. 30; 1932, p. 24; 1936, p. 37.
 67.

in the Civil Code remained unaltered. Article 119 of the Weimar

Constitution, which recognised that it should be brought up to date,

remained a dead letter, in spite of resolutions that it should be

implemented1. At a time when marriage was felt by many to be on the

defensive, it is hardly surprising that there was reluctance to alter

its traditional forms. Agitation for reform was carried on chiefly by

the radical feminists; but it was Marie-Elisabeth Luders, a conservative

in many respects, who sponsored a rather radical proposal for a

change in the law of divorce as outlined in the Civil Code. There, the

sexes were set on an equal footing, and various grounds for divorce,

including adultery, bigamy, insanity and the rather vague category

of "cruelty ", were specified2. Now, in the 1920s, Marie Elisabeth

Lt&ders represented those who believed that the concept of "guilt"

associated with these grounds should be abolished, and the

"irretrievable breakdown" of a marriage made the sole ground for

divorce3. But this, like other proposals for amendments to the

Civil Code, came to nothing; in marriage, at any rate, the man

retained the rights of decision and authority delegated to him in

1896 until, in the Federal Republic, a new declaration of intent in

the Basic Law was given substance by the Equal Rights Law of 18 June,

19574.

1. W. Knorr, "Die Frau im Recht ", FiS, October, 1931, pp. 5 -7.

2. Greiff, op. cit., pp. 824 -39. See also Julius Hirschfeld, "The
Law of Divorce in England and Germany ", Law Quarterly Review, 1897,
PP. 396 -405.

3. Puckett, op. cit., pp. 265 -66.

4. Karl Lorenz, "Einftthrung", Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, Munich, 1970,

p. 19.
 68.

The Nazis claimed to want to promote marriage and maintain

the family, and it was to be expected that they would not aim to

change the relative legal positions of men and women within them.

But the encouragement they gave applied strictly to those whom

they regarded as valuable citizens, from the points of view of race,

heredity, health and politics. Hans Frank expressed his party's

view thus: "There is no area of State policy which does not have

its foundations in the realm of the family "1. This was what was

felt to justify the intervention of the State in the marriage

relationship: "marriage is not merely a private matter, but one which

directly affects the fate of a nation at its very roots ", was how

a female spokeswoman put it2. Here, then, is the motive behind

a number of measures instituted by the Government which were

euphemistically termed "laws for the protection of marriage "3. The

first priority was to prevent marriages taking place between "Aryan"

Germans and non-"Aryans ", especially Jews. Not everyone went as far

as Hans Schemm, who claimed to have found scientific backing for the

theory of Julius Streicher that intercourse with a Jew would poison

the blood of an "Aryan" woman, so that she would not be able to bear

"Aryan" children4. But the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 forbade

not only the marriage of an "Aryan" with a Jew, but also sexual

1. BA, R61/172, Hans Frank's speech to the Academy of German Law's

Family Law Committee, December 1935 (exact date not given).

2. Else Vorwerck, "Gedanken über die Ehe im nationalsozialistischen

Staat ", NS- Frauenbuch, Munich, 1934, p. 146.

3. BA, loc. cit.

4. Report in Fränkische Tageszeitung, 30 January, 1935.

 69.

intercourse between them1. This opened the way for other measures,

and for a general reappraisal of both the marriage and divorce laws,

with a view to reforming them2.

Heredity was felt to be as vital a factor as race, and so the

"Marriage Health Law" was passed in October 1935 with the purpose

of actually prohibiting a person from marrying under certain

circumstances. These included illness which might affect either a

potential spouse or any offspring; the illness could be physical,

mental, or some other described in the "Law for the Prevention of

Hereditarily Diseased Offspring" of July 1933. To ensure that the

law was enforced, an engaged couple was obliged in future to obtain

a certificate from the local health office affirming that both were,

by the definition of the law, fit for marriage3. This involved a

medical examination, whose certification had only six months'

validity, so that if the marriage was delayed beyond that time a

further examination was required4. Marriages contracted abroad in

order to circumvent the law would be invalid, and the contracting of

a marriage without a certificate was punishable with imprisonment for

not less than three months, although the penalty would be imposed only

if the marriage was declared null and void as the result of an eventual

examinations.

1. "Reichsb{trgergesetz" and "Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes

und der deutschen Ehre", RGB, 1935 I, 15 September, 1935, pp. 1146-
47.

2. "Vorschlage zur Eherechtsreform ", report in FZ, 12 January, 1935.

3. "Gesetz zum Schutze der Gesundheit des deutschen Volkes

(Ehegesundheitsgesetz) ", RGB, 1935 I, 18 October, 1935, p. 1246.

4. "1. DVO zur Durchfiihrung des Ehegesundheitsgesetz ", RGB, 1935 I,

29 November, 1935, pp. 1419 -20.

5. "Eheverbote in gewissen Fallen ", VB, 20 October, 1935.

 70.

It became clear that the examination did not, however, always

reveal hereditary defects, even when an SS doctor, trained in

understanding the genealogical tables which applicants for marriage

had to provide, carefully scrutinised the family history. Deep

investigation showed that men and women whose forebears had suffered

from such objectionable diseases as tuberculosis, alcoholism and

even insanity were slipping through the examination, because the SS

doctor, particularly in the cities, was not familiar with the applicants'

case and family history1. The Party's Racial Policy Office launched

a campaign to draw attention to its "Ten Commandments for Choosing a

Spouse ", to try to alert the "racially and hereditarily healthy" to

the dangers of choosing a partner who was not "equally valuable ";

having outlined the qualifications required in this respect, the

Commandments stipulated another, which would not necessarily be

compatible with them - "marry only for love: "2. The motive here was

the same as ever: a loving couple would be more likely to provide a

stable home, and, so it was thought, many children.

Not only were the Nazis anxious to prevent marriages which

they did not feel to be in the interests of the State from taking

place; they were also concerned to facilitate the dissolution of

"unsuitable" marriages which had already been contracted. Hans Frank

made it clear that his party did not take divorce lightly; equally,

he was at pains to point out that it could not support a view which

1. IfZ, MA 387, frames 5183 -85, "Ausbildungsbrief Nr. 3 des SS-

Sanitátsamtes ", 31 May, 1937.

2. IfZ, MA 47, frames 8005272 -73, "Zehn Leitsátze für die Gattenwahl ",
Rassenpolitisches Amt, Gau Baden, reproduction of an article of
June 1937 in the Festschrift für das R.d.K.
 71.

forbade the dissolution of a marriage which had patently broken

down. The new divorce law, over whose constitution he was presiding,

would be designed to reflect these views, he saidl. The present law

was felt to be in such urgent need of reform that the Family Law

Committee of the Academy of German Law had decided at its opening

meeting in Munich in March 1934 to devote its energies towards a

reframing of the divorce law, as its first priority2. The most

difficult question here was whether guilt should continue to be

apportioned to one or both parties in a divorce. The Committee was

of the opinion that this practice sometimes created difficulties in

the achieving of a divorce, even where the maintenance of the

marriage was neither desired by the two partners nor to the benefit

of the community3. The chief consideration here was that an

estranged couple was unlikely to contribute to the birth -rate, while

the dissolution of their marriage would enable each to enter into a new

and more fruitful partnership4.

The result of the exertions of the Family Law Committee was

the Marriage Law of 1938, which incorporated the new divorce law. The

existing restrictions on marriage were reiterated and augmented in

minor matters; but the most interesting and sweeping provisions related

1. BA, R61/172, loc. cit.

2. BA, R61/173, Academy of German Law, "Vorschlag zur Neugestaltung

des Deutschen Ehescheidungsrechtes", August 1935.

3. BA, R61/174, Academy of German Law, Family Law Committee,

"Stellungnahme betreffend Neugestaltung des deutschen Ehescheidungs-
rechtes", 29 September, 1936.

4. Report in wuS, 1939, no. 23, p. 755.

 72.

to divorce. The clauses of the Civil Code concerning it were

revoked and replaced by a new definition of grounds for divorce.

These included the formalising of a practice already begun, by which

a partner might sue for divorce if his or her spouse refused, without

good cause, to allow the begetting or conceiving of offspring; in

addition, a divorce might be granted if either partner resorted to

illegal means to try to prevent a birth - a clear reference to

abortion1. As early as December 1935, it had been reported that a

county court had dissolved a marriage and named the wife as the guilty

party because she had refused to have children. The explanation

given was that she was directly contravening the current view of the

nature of marriage2. The 1938 law was indeed intended to spell out

the Nazi view of the nature of marriage, which, as in this case,

included an indication of what constituted an unacceptable marriage.

Adultery remained a ground for divorce; and premature

infertility became one, provided that there were no "hereditarily

healthy" children of the marriage. But the most interesting, and

indeed revolutionary, provision was "paragraph 55 ", which stated that

either partner might apply for a divorce if the couple had lived

apart for three years and the marriage seemed to have broken down

irretrievably3. This clause thus permitted the dissolution of a

marriage without the apportioning of blame, and without the need for

the existence - or manufacturing - of the traditional kind of "grounds ",

as specified in the Civil Code. That this was seen chiefly as a means

1. "Gesetz zur Vereinheitlichung des Rechts der Eheschliessung und

der Ehescheidung im Lande osterreich und im übrigen Reichsgebiet",
RGB, 1938 I, vol. 2, 6 July, 1938, pp. 807 -22.

2. Report in FZ, 1 December, 1935.

3. RGB, op. cit., pp. 812 -13.

 73.

of enabling citizens to enter a new union, which would be more likely

to provide the nation with children, does not detract from the fact

that it permitted the dissolution of an irreparable marriage, in a

manner which was at last regarded as humane and sensible in England

and Wales (but not in Scotland) in 19691.

Ironically, this new provision was very similar to what the

Women's Movement had been campaigning for in the 1920s, but for

rather different motives; then, the happiness of the individual was

seen as a good reason for trying to revise the law2. In Nazi Germany,

however, it was made clear that this policy was designed not so much to

accommodate the private individual as to allow the interests of the

nation to take precedence, by upholding "valuable" marriages and

allowing the dissolution of those which had no value for the

community3. But individuals did benefit: Erich Hilgenfeldt, leader

of the NSV, had his marriage dissolved in 1940, under "paragraph 55 ",

in order to remarry; his first marriage had long since broken down,

his wife and he having separated in 1932 or 19334.

The new divorce law was demonstrably popular among the German

people: in 1939, the first full year of the law's operation, divorces

reached the unprecedented height of almost 62,000, 21.6% of which were

granted under "paragraph 55 ". The official view, which seems

reasonable, was that a substantial number of people whose marriage had

indeed broken down, but who had no grounds for divorce under the Civil

1. J. L. Barton, "Questions on the Divorce Reform Act of 1969 ", Law

Quarterly Review, 1970, p. 348.

2. Puckett, loc. cit.

3. Report in WuS, loc. cit.

4. BDC, SS file on Erich Hilgenfeldt. Hilgenfeldt's association

with the Nazi women's organisation will be discussed in Chapter 6.
 74.

Code, at once took advantage of this new provision; certainly,

50% of the divorces granted under "paragraph 55" had been contracted

twenty or more years earlier. In 1940 the number of divorces

dropped to below 50,000, but still 15.558 were granted under "paragraph

55 ", and almost half of these were marriages of long duration1.

Clearly, the new measure would continue to relieve estranged couples

of the legal ties of a marriage which had in reality ceased to exist.

And, more important from the Government's point of view, it would also

permit the regularising of relationships already entered into by

nominally married persons, and therefore the legitimising of offspring

of the new union.

If "paragraph 55" seemed reasonable to many, there was doubt

about another aspect of the new divorce law, that relating to the

support of a divorced spouse. It was laid down that the "guilty"

husband, in cases where guilt still applied, must support his former

wife in the manner to which she had been accustomed, if she did not

have sufficient income from property and could not reasonably be

expected to earn her own living; equally, the "guilty" wife was

obliged to pay maintenance to her former husband if he was unable

to support himself. This was, in fact, almost an exact repetition

of a paragraph in the Civil Code?. But the 1938 law went on to add

that the new responsibilities of the partner liable to pay maintenance

- if he entered a new marriage, especially - were to be taken into

consideration when the amount of alimony was settled

1. Report in 6VuS, 1942, no. 1, pp. 22-23.

2. Greiff, op. cit., p. 839.

3. RGB, op. cit., pp. 814-15.

 75.

This broad definition of responsibility led to demands for

further clarification, and in 1939 Dr. Gärtner, the Minister of

Justice, felt obliged to try to explain it. It was not intended - as

some people claimed - he said, that a man declared "guilty" would no

longer be required to support his former wife, simply because she

was capable of working; after all, she might have children to look

after. But beyond this all the Minister would say was that the

condition of the labour market could influence a divorced wife's

duty to take a jobl. Again, the needs of the State were to have full

priority: by 1939 Germany needed to tap every available source of

labour; and for pro -natalist reasons men were to be relieved of the

need to pay maintenance, if possible, so that they would be enabled

to enter a new marriage and start a new family.

Nazi legislation affecting marriage and divorce led in the

later 1930s to growing friction between the regime and the Catholic

Church. The Vatican was quick to register its disapproval of the

1938 law with the German Ambassador2, and, on the other side, Himmler

repeatedly attacked the Church for its narrow -minded view of marriage

and morality3. In reports by his secret service agents the Catholic

Church was habitually referred to under the heading "opponents "4.

Certainly, priests had spoken out against what they saw as a

1. "Der Unterhalt geschiedener Frauen ", FZ, 14 May, 1939.

2. BA, R4311/1523a, letter from the Foreign Office to Lammers, Kerrl,

Gärtner et al., 31 July, 1938.

3. IfZ, MA 387, frame 5194, "Verein 'Lebensborn'e.V. ", 31 May, 1937.

Kersten, op. cit., pp. 154 -56, 176 -77.

4. Heinz Boberach (ed.), Meldungen aus dem Reich, Munich, 1968, e.g.
pp. 34, 47, 61, 87.
 76.

relaxing of moral standards, and early in 1940 the Catholic bishops

in Germany criticised the relaxation of the lengthy procedure which

had been developed to ensure that only the "suitable" married, on the

grounds that people ought to spend time seriously considering the

nature of marriage and preparing themselves for itl. To try to

abolish the still -persisting influence of the Churches in family

affairs, an enthusiastic Party worker put forward proposals for a

compulsory Nazi marriage service2, which would also have the effect of

giving the State even closer control over this vi-tal area.

But in war -time some aspects of close control were to be

sacrificed, if only on a temporary basis. At the end of August, with

war imminent, a law was passed which removed the requirement that

an intending couple submit to a medical examination to ascertain

whether they were fit to marry3. This would facilitate marriage

- and, it was hoped, procreation - by enabling conscripts to marry

before going to the front, whereas the provisions of the Marriage

Health Law would have forced many to wait, perhaps indefinitely. But

the lifting of restrictions was found to be having undesirable side -

effects, with "hereditarily unsound" persons taking advantage of the

quicker procedure4. Himmler congratulated himself early in 1940 on

the success of his "population propaganda" which, he claimed, was

1. BA, 858/147, MadR, 15 January, 1940, "Gegner: Katholische

Hirtenbrief über die Ehe ".

2. BA, NS15/15, cutting from FZ, 20 August, 1939, "Die Form der
Trauung", by Gauamtsleiter Staatsrat Dr. FMrg (Augsburg).

3. "Verordnung zur Durchführung des Gesetzes zur Verhütung erbkranken

Nachwuchses und des Ehegesundheitsgesetzes", RGB, 1939 I, 31 August,
1939, p. 1561.

4. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750525, MadR, 27 December, 1939.

 77.

leading to the contracting of large numbers of marriages in war-

1
time . But how many of those marrying after August 1939 would have

married in previous years if the new "race and heredity" legislation

had not been in force was something he did not consider. Although

the extent of this can only be surmised, it is reasonable to suppose

that a backlog of unregistered marriages built up in the later 1930s

which would be regularised at the first opportunity. In this area, as

with the birth rate and birth control, the Nazis were attempting the

near impossible, by trying to exert a decisive and overwhelming

influence in the area most difficult to control - and where attempts

at control are least defensible - namely the private life of the

individual citizen.

C. Abortion and Contraception

Within the entire area of marriage, the family and the birth

rate no question raised such passions nor was so violently contested

as that of the law concerning abortion. Before the Great War the

radical feminists had campaigned for the repeal of the harsh

penalties laid down in the Criminal Code of the Empire for anyone

attempting to procure or perform an abortion2. The SPD, too, had

called for reform, and this remained party policy after the war3.

Outflanking the SPD, and following the policy of Soviet Russia, where

abortion had been legalised4, the KPD demanded that there be no

1. BA, R58/147, MadR, 17 January, 1940.

2. Evans, op. cit., pp. 192 -221, describes the radicals' campaign
and the liberal feminists' opposition to it.

3. Bolte and Kappe, loc. cit.

4. Fannina Halle, Woman in Soviet Russia, London, 1933, pp. 38 -39.

 78.

restriction whatever in Germany, since it was a woman's right to

decide whether and when she would have children. The KPD bitterly

attacked the SPD for failing to legalise abortion while it was in

government, but at the same time implicitly pointed to the chief

reason for this failure by attacking the Churches and the Centre

Party for their implacable opposition to toleration of abortion'.

Indeed the SPD had soft- pedalled its policy of favouring a radical

reform of the law, in its new -found respectability as a party of

government; but given the pathological terror of its coalition

partner, the Centre Party, of any relaxing of morals - and of the

legalisation of abortion above all2 - this attitude was a prudent

one if reform in any area was to be achieved.

It is, in fact, remarkable that, given the Centre Party's

implacable opposition to the legalisation of abortion, and its

consistent tenure of office, the law was reformed in May 1926, with

the Draconian Imperial penalties modified so that they bore less

heavily on the woman seeking or undergoing an abortion, while still

allowing the severe punishment of anyone discovered performing

1. "Richtlinien der KPD zur Frage der Geburtenregelung", document in

AfB, 1931, pp. 60 -61.

BA, R58/, RMdI /NsdL, "Private Wohlfahrt und Reformismus ", Rote
Wohlfahrt publication, 21 September, 1932, p. 251.

BA, R58/(fol. 1), RMdI /NsdL, "Politische Resolution beschlossen

auf dem Reichskultur- Kongress, Leipzig, 14. und 15.3.1931", 13
April, 1931.

2. Klaus Epstein, "The Zentrum Party in the Weimar Republic" (review

article of Rudolf Horsey, Die deutsche Zentrumspartei 1917 -1923,
Düsseldorf, 1966), Journal of Modern History, 1967, p. 162.
 79.

abortions for payment1. And in 1927, as the result of a test case,

there was for the first time toleration of abortion on medical grounds

where, especially, the health or life of the woman would be endangered

if the pregnancy were allowed to run its course2. The compromise

on abortion resulting from these decisions could go some way towards

satisfying the reformers without driving the Churches, especially,

into hysteria; but it was seen by both the KPD and the radical

feminists as a feeble and inadequate outcome.

Particularly in the depression years the KPD waged a massive

campaign against "paragraph 218 ", chiefly through its auxiliary

group the ARSO (Association of Social Policy Organisations), which

operated both through its own national committee for population

policy and in conjunction with affiliated groups working for sexual

reform, for example the League for the Protection of Mothers and

the Workers' Union for Birth Control3. There was, in addition, the

Freethinkers' Society, another KPD auxiliary, whose main purpose was

to combat the influence of the Churches, which were regarded as the

chief defenders of "paragraph 218 ". This law was seen as an integral

part of the enslavement of women within the capitalist system, of which

1. Bolte and Kappe, loc. cit.

Hans Harmsen, "Notes on Abortion and Birth-Control in Germany",

Population Studies, 1949 -50, p. 402. Paragraphs 219 and 220
of the Criminal Code were repealed, leaving an altered paragraph
218, which became the symbol as well as the reality of what those
in favour of legalising abortion opposed.

2. Bolte and Kappe, loc. cit.

"Eugenische Indikation und Paragraph 218 ", FZ, 23 January, 1935.

3. BA, R58/1148, RMdI/NsdL, 19 December, 1932, "Arso ".

 80.

the Churches were, rightly, held to be staunch supporters1. The

KPD therefore tried to attract women to the working-class side in the

class war by publicising its campaign against the abortion law, since,

as the Central Information Office of the Reich Ministry of the

Interior reported,

"The sexual organisations affiliated to the ARSO,

like all fringe groups of the KPD, have as their primary
aim the recruiting and educating of new fighters for the
proletarian revolution by exploiting their particular
grievance or distress "2.

The propaganda material of the KPD and the ARSO certainly gave

the impression that more or less all working-class women were

suffering untold distress as a result of the remaining restrictions

on abortion3. Certainly, with anything between half a million and

a million abortions performed in Germany annually4 the issue was one

of national importance, the more so since the result of driving

desperate women, more of them married than single, into the hands of

back -street abortionists was that there were perhaps as many as

1. BA, R58/1146, RNIdI/NsdL, n.d. ?April 1932.

2. BA, R58/1148, loc. cit.

3. Numerous examples of such propaganda material may be found in the

BA, R58 files, e.g., R58/, RMdI /NsdL, " Proklamation zur kultur-
ellen Befreiung des werktätigen Volkes", Kampfbereit, December 1931,
p. 14, and 858/1148, RiidI /NsdL, 19 December, 1932, "Arso ".

4. The estimates vary: D.P. Glass stated that 800,000 to 1 million

was the most common estimate for the years after 1918 (Population
Policies and Movements, London, 1940, p. 279); Dr. Clara Bender,
in Archiv far Frauenkunde, 1932, p. 282, estimates an annual
figure of 2 million to 1 million; 0. Jean Brandes, "The Effect of
the War on the German family ", Social Forces, 1950/51, p. 166, n.3,
reports the 1928 Congress of German Physicians at Eisenach as
estimating that there were 500,000- 800,000 abortions each year.
 81.

100,000 cases of serious illness each year directly caused by

abortion techniques1. And there was the additional hazard of

prosecution. Die Frau im Staat, calling for the abolition of

"paragraph 218 ", reported in autumn 1930 the case of a miner's wife

who had been sentenced to three years' imprisonment for having

performed abortions, although it was established that in 140 cases

she had neither taken any payment nor once caused injury or illness2.

She may well have been exceptional in not charging her clients; on

the whole, abortions cost money, and a Breslau woman doctor went as

far as to say in 1932 that the availability of abortion had become

"purely a matter of cash "3.

The tenacityand enthusiasm with which the Communists and

radical feminists campaigned for "abortion on demand" did not mean that

they were actually in favour of abortion. Both groups rather

regarded it as a necessary evil, as an emergency measure which was

less evil than forcing a woman to bring into the world a child who

was not wanted and who probably could not be cared for adequately.

The better solution, they felt, was an end to the existing restrictions

1. Again, estimates vary: a book reviewer in FiS, May 1929, p. 11,

puts the figure at somewhere between 61,000 and 100,000; Clara
Bender, loc. cit., states that abortions led to 4,000 -5,000 deaths
and at least 100,000 cases of serious illness each year. It is
possible that a greater resort to abortion during the depression
years partly explains this discrepancy.

2. " Unsere Buchstaben- Justiz ", FiS, September/October 1930, pp. 16 -17.

3. Clara Bender, loc. cit.

 82.

on the spread of contraceptive advicel. In post -war Germany this

issue was contested almost as fiercely as was that of abortion law

reform. Although birth-control organisations existed freely, some

being commercial undertakings and some run on a charitable basis by

voluntary organisations, while some of the sickness insurance funds

provided contraceptive advice as part of their service2, there was

a legal ban on the public advertisement of contraceptives, so that

those most in need of help had only a limited chance of learning that

it was available. To combat this, the KPD formed another auxiliary

group alongside the ARSO, which they called the AMSO (Association of

Marxist Social Workers), to agitate for freely available contraceptive

advice. The main complaint of the AMSO was that the law was invoked

only against the proletarian organisations for sexual reform, and in

order to show its absurdity, the AMSO was, in January 1933, seriously

considering bringing a complaint against the Berlin Police Sports

Union's magazine, which habitually carried full and frank advertisements

for contraceptives, and which had nevertheless not been prosecuted3.

If the KPD and the radical feminists were in a minority in

their open and wholehearted campaigns for the legalisation of abortion,

they were in much larger company when it came to promoting the spread

1. "Richtlinien der KPD zur Frage der Geburtenregelung", document

in AfB, 1931, pp. 57 -59.

BA, R58/, propaganda leaflet of ?early January, 1933, gives the

KPD slogan as "Nicht abtreiben, sondern verhüten:"

Auguste Kirchhoff, "Siebenter internationaler Kongress für Geburt-

enregelung", FiS, November 1930, p. 5.

2. Glass, op. cit., pp. 276 -77.

3. BA, R58/336, RMdII /NsdL, 6 January, 1933.

 83.

of contraceptive advice and general sexual enlightenment. There

had already been birth-control organisations before the war, and their

number increased very considerably after it. The most noticeable

expansion was among those groups appealing to the working class, and

in July 1928 a number of these joined together in the National

Association for Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene. This was a non-

profit- making organisation with 12,000 members; but although it

addressed itself to working-class women and girls in the language

of the political left, it deliberately kept itself politically neutral,

so as to appeal to as wide a clientéle as possible. Activity in the

field of birth control intensified greatly in the late 1920s and

early 1930s, particularly once the economic depression made freedom

from an unwanted pregnancy an even greater need for many women. In

1930, to meet the needs of the German capital, three prominent

doctors founded the first marriage advisory centre in Berlin, and

their example was followed elsewhere1. Finally, in January 1931

representatives of the most important birth -control groups founded

the German Central Office for Birth Control, as a non- political

organisation to facilitate the exchange of information among the

various groups, and to look at sexual matters in their social, legal,

eugenic and ethical context; it was also intended to make contact

with birth-control groups abroad2.

1. Hans Lehfeldt, "Die Laienorganisationen Geburtenregelung ",

AfB, 1932, pp. 62 -68.

2. Report in AfB, 1931, p. 84.

 84.

The Churches were rightly seen by socialists, radicals and

progressives as the chief bastions of resistance to the legalisation

of abortion and the spread of contraceptive advice. The Evangelical

Church was decisively in favour of large families and opposed to

"any limiting of births on grounds of selfishness, convenience or

pleasure"l; it regretted that the problems of the economic depression

were having a destructive effect on family life in this context2.

The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church was summed up in the Papal

Encyclical "Casti Conubii" of 1930, in response to a situation which

had, from the Church's point of view, rapidly deteriorated during the

1920s. Abortion was anathema to Catholics, and on the question of

contraception the Pope's words were, as Campbell says, "forceful and

unambiguous ". This "shameful and intrinsically immoral...criminal

abuse" was to be stamped out by a concerted campaign by Catholics

everywhere3. To counter the advisory centres established by the

groups in favour of birth control both Churches set up their own

"Marriage Advisory Centres ", which merely gave clients the Christian

view of marriage and sexual life, with no medical or physiological

advice whatsoever4.

1. The wording here is strikingly similar to that of a resolution

adopted by the Anglican Church at the Lambeth Conference in 1930:
"The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any
methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury,
or mere convenience ". Quoted in Flann Campbell, "Birth Control
and the Christian Churches ", Populations Studies, 1960, p. 136.

2. "Aufruf des Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchenausschuss vom 25. Mai

1932 ", document in AfB, 1932, pp. 95-96.

3. Campbell, op. cit., p. 138.

4. Max Hodann, History of Modern Morals, London, 1937, pp. 167 -68.
 85.

The Churches were not the only pro -natalist groups, however.

The concern about the declining birth rate of the immediately pre-

war and then the war years had led to the founding of organisations to

promote the idea that large families were not only a national

necessity but positively desirable in themselves. In 1923 these groups

amalgamated into the Reichsbund der Kinderreichen Deutschlands zum

Schutz der Familie (RdK), with its headquarters in Berlin. It was

estimated that a meeting of the association in 1927 in Bochum

attracted some 5,000 participants1; but the pro -natalists did not

command the organised support enjoyed by their opponents in the

birth -control groups. These were said to have 70,000 members by

1931 in the lay organisations, over and above those run by the medical

profession2. And, certainly, the population as a whole demonstrated

its preference, as the birth rate continued to decline. No doubt the

depression had a considerable effect on people's desire for children;

but if it was a matter of choice then it seems that the real reason

for the trend as a whole was the much more widespread use of

contraceptives as a result of the greater activity of the birth -

control organisations in the later 1920s and early 1930s, and their

greater success than the pro -natalist groups.

This could be true only in a political climate which tolerated

and encouraged freedom of choice, freedom of association. The

1. David V. Glass, Population Policies and Movements, London, 1940,

pp. 272 -74.

2. Report in AfB, 1931, P. 84.

 86.

Communists may well have felt that they were discriminated against

in the Weimar Republic, and indeed the confidential reports made

on Communist activities under the last governments of the Republic

suggest a degree of surveillance which many liberals would no doubt

have thought offensive in a democracy1. The remnants of democracy

and freedom were, however, eliminated in the early months of 1933,

after the Nazi take -over, and the views of the Nazi Party on

procreation, as on other subjects, became national policy. Hitler

had written, "it must be considered as reprehensible conduct to

refrain from giving healthy children to the nation", which suggested

that abortion would be stamped out, contraceptives banned, and the

birth -control organisations declared illegal. On the other hand,

Nazi theories about race and heredity meant that in certain cases

methods of birth control would be positively encouraged. Again,

Hitler had provided the guidelines: "...there is only one infamy,

namely for parents that are ill or show hereditary defects to

bring children into the world "2. To ensure that the fittest survived,

only the fit should be allowed to procreate. For the first time,

then, there was to be a State -directed population policy, with

coercion and compulsion as the corollary of the incentives mentioned

earlier.

It was as typical of the Nazis to introduce their State -

directed policy as it had been of the Weimar governments to shun

such a course. But what was involved in the closing down of birth -

control centres was not merely the new regime's population policy,

R58 files.
1. The records of these reports are to be found in the BA,

2. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Munich, 1936, p. 338.

 87.

but also its political aims, for a number of the organisations

providing contraceptive advice and distributing propaganda about

birth control were, of course, run by the KPD. The "Law for the

Protection of the People and the State ", passed on 28 February, 1933,

was used by police authorities in Dortmund, Hamburg and Liegnitz, for

example, to ban birth- control organisations, on the grounds of their

association with "Marxist groups ", while in the state of Thuringia

every single birth-control organisation was compulsorily dissolved,

on the same pretext1. Other groups survived longer, but were forced

to conduct their activities in the greatest secrecy, which was bound

to be counterproductive when their entire campaign depended on the

spreading of propaganda. Even so, assiduous police activity often

resulted in the detection of groups which had tried to disguise

their purpose. In April 1933 it was reported that the organisation

with the acceptable name of the League for the Protection of

Mothers was indeed a welfare concern, but was, in addition, a front

for illicit KPD meetings2.

The League was also continuing to campaign, as effectively as

possible under the circumstances, against "paragraph 218" and also

against the prohibition of the birth -control organisations which,

it claimed, was on the agenda for legislation, along with a measure

to restrict the distribution of contraceptives to chemists; this

last restriction would mean the end of free contraceptives and the

putting of prices beyond the means of working-class women. Already,

1. "Verbot der Laienorganisationen für Geburtenregelung", AfB, 1933 -34,

p. 55.

2. BA, R58/, typewritten memo, 14 April, 1933.

 88.

as a sign of the new Government's earnest intent, the number of

prosecutions for abortion was increasing. The League now called,

desperately and belatedly, for a united front of all groups

dedicated to sexual reform, to fight the menace of fascism and defend

their organisations1.

The League's fears were partly justified. Before the end of

May 1933 a law was passed reintroducing paragraphs 219 and 220 of

the Criminal Code in a new form, which specified a punishment of up

to two years' imprisonment or a fine for anyone advertising or

offering abortion facilities, unless there were permitted medical

circumstances2. To try to ensure that members of the medical

profession would not use their position to perform abortions freely,

a campaign was launched to detect and dismiss those felt to be suspect.

In Berlin, on the day after the law was passed, the Mayor reported

to one of his chiefs of police that certain persons, including some

doctors, had been dismissed from the city's employment because of

their connection with the "Red Welfare" organisation of the KPD. The

AMIGO was apparently managing to survive, although by now the authorities

were keeping a close watch on its activities3. But it appears that,

amazingly, a few of the birth control organisations managed to stay in

existence; Hodann reported that in 1935 there were still Marxist groups

1. BA, R58/, "Kampf gegen das drohende Verbot der Sexualorganisationen:"

Die Warte, ?March /April 1933 (covering letter, as above, dated
14 April, 1933).

2. "Gesetz zur Anderung strafrechtlicher Vorschriften", RGB, 1933 I,

26 Ivïay, 1933, p. 296.

3. BA, R58/, letter from the Mayor of Berlin to the head of a section
of the Berlin police force, 27 May, 1933.
 89.

for sexual reform active in Germany, in spite of their being known

to the Gestapo

Meanwhile, it had become apparent that the new regime was

prepared to tolerate and even approve abortion in certain cases.

The Hereditary Health Court in Hamburg, in a test case in March

1934, gave a judgment which declared abortion on grounds of racial

health to be a non -punishable act. Reporting this, the Frankfurter

Zeitung commented that the Court was deliberately making a

fundamental decision of principle which it expected to serve as a

precedent. The "medical indication" had already been made a ground

for performing an abortion legally, in 1927; now the Nazis had

introduced the "eugenic indication ", which permitted the termination

of a pregnancy if the health of the nation was considered to be

endangered by the birth of an "hereditarily unhealthy" child, on

condition that the mother acquiesced2. This was a logical corollary

to the Sterilisation Law of 14 July, 1933, and the same definition of

"hereditary health" applied, namely the absence of mental illness and

of certain kinds of physical illness or disability which might

conceivably be heritable. Alcoholism was regarded as an "hereditary

risk" also3, since it was claimed that women who were alcoholics

generally gave birth to children who were mentally or physically

retarded, or who became delinquents or prostitutes; it was also believed

that the wife of an alcoholic who did not herself suffer from the

1. Hodann, op. cit., pp. 165 -66.

2. "Eugenische Indikation und Paragraph 218 ", FZ, 23 January, 1935.

3. "Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses ", RGB, 1933 I, 14

July, 1933, p. 529.
 90.
disease might bear maladjusted children1.

The Frankfurter Zeitung guardedly observed that before 1933

the Nazis had campaigned vigorously, and with some success, against

those who had tried to have social grounds such as indigence made

a legal ground for abortion, and had given people to understand that

they would never permit abortion for frivolous reasons if they came

to power. Now, however, they were permitting the termination of a

pregnancy - while the life was still unviable - where a legally -

approved application for sterilisation had been made on eugenic

grounds, again with the approval of the woman concerned. The paper

could only hint at the apparent inconsistency here, while approving

this step in the direction of allowing a woman more control over her

reproductive capacity, if only in strictly limited circumstances2.

Professor D.V. Glass, hardly a reactionary and certainly not an

admirer of the Nazis, also called this move "liberal "3, but this was

before the Nazis' eugenics policies had been revealed in their full

horror, during the war. An early sign of the direction these would

later take came in 1938, when the announcement was made that Jews

would not be liable to prosecution if they resorted to abortion, since

this could only benefit the German people4. The same reasoning led

Himmler to regard homosexuality as sabotage, and therefore to

1. Gertrud Kaetzel, Volksgift und Frauenpflichten, Munich, undated,

PP. 4 -10.

2. "Die Eugenische Indikation", FZ, 28 June, 1935.

3. Glass, op. cit., p. 283.

4. BA, NSD30 /vorl. 1836, Informationsdienst..., March 1939, "Anwendung

nur auf das deutsche Volk".
 91.

contemplate tolerating it in non -"Aryans" while meting out the most

severe of penalties to homosexuals who were German citizens1.

In general, however, the intention had been to eliminate

abortion, so that "racially valuable" children were not lost to the

nation in this way. But the tightening up of the law and the more

rigorous prosecution of those performing and undergoing abortions

by no means had the desired effect, as Himmler's staff was well

aware2. In May 1937, an SS Medical Information Office letter stated

that the number of abortions taking place annually "must still,

incredibly, be estimated as high ", and that it must be reduced3. But

in spite of the sanctions, the practice continued. Himmler's agents

reported an increase in miscarriages in December 1939, which they

attributed partly to the taking over of heavy work on the land by

wives whose husbands had been called up, and partly to anxiety in

women at the danger their husbands might be facing. But, in addition

to this, they believed that some miscarriages were being induced

deliberately. This was, they said, particularly noticeable in Danzig,

where German troops had by this time been in occupation for the two or

three months felt to be most likely to elapse between conception and

the resort to abortion. But also in Karlsruhe a gynaecologist reported

1. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, London, 1956, p. 57.

2. IfZ, MA 306, frame 593008, letter from Wangemann, on Himmler's

staff, to Himmler, 7 February, 1938.

3. IfZ, MA 387, frames 5193 -94, "Verein 'Lebensborn' e.V. ", 31

May, 1937.
 92.

that almost every week he had to deal with miscarriages which showed

all the signs of having been caused by abortion techniques1.

The war made the matter of population growth seem even

more urgent, with the need to make good the losses in the field, and,

so Hess and Himmler believed, to ensure that each soldier did his

patriotic duty by fathering a child before he went to the front2.

Thus, Himmler was deeply concerned when official statistics showed

that there were still about 600,000 abortions being performed in

Germany each year, a level comparable with that estimated for the

years between 1918 and 19333. The sanctions and the heavy pro -natalist

propaganda used as instruments of Nazi policy seem, therefore, to

have had little or no effect in reducing, far less in eliminating,

the practice of abortion, although the penalty of imprisonment was

freely imposed on offenders4. Trying to persuade the army to support

the anti -abortion campaign vigorously, Himmler wrote to Keitel

that the prevention of the 600,000 annual abortions could in twenty

years be providing two hundred more regiments for the army in each

succeeding years. But at the same time it was still considered vital

to prevent the birth of children who were deemed to be "unfit" by

sanctioning abortion where at least one parent had an "hereditary

defect ", and where - so Frick believed - racial grounds made the

1. BA, R58/146, MadR, 13 December, 1939, "Zunahme der Fehlgeburten ".

2. "Der Sieg der Frauen", Das Schwarze Korps, 4 January, 1940.

3. See note 2 on page 80.

4. BA, R431I/1286a, letter from the Hanover Chief of Police to the

Reich Chancellery, 13 March, 1941.

5. IfZ, Fa 202, letter from Himmler to Keitel, undated, ?late July,

1940.
 93.

continuation of the pregnancy undesirable1.

The Nazis claimed to have closed down the former marriage

advisory centres, which had in fact had as their chief function the

giving of contraceptive advice2; they replaced them with their own

bureaux for giving positive encouragement and advice about pregnancy

and child care3. Perhaps surprisingly, however, there were no formal

decrees against the production and sale of contraceptives before the

war broke out; this was no doubt largely because the condom was

regarded as a protective against the spread of venereal disease as

well as against conception, and it was one of the Nazis' constant

preoccupations that venereal disease could lead to sterility. Lenz,

one of the Party's most prominent population pundits, estimated that

more than 100,000 children were lost annually as a result of venereal

disease, quite apart from the infected children born to diseased

parents4. But although the spread of venereal disease in the peculiar

situation of the war - particularly among teenage girls who hung around

railway stations soliciting among soldiers5 - was a source of deep

concern, the Himmler Police Ordinance of January 1941 categorically

banned the production and distribution of contraceptives. This was

1. IfZ, MA 47, letter from Frick to Reichsstatthalter, Land governments,

health offices et al., 19 September, 1940.

2. F. K. Scheumann in AfFr, 1931 -32, pp. 299 -300.

3. Dr. Lippert, "Unterhaltszuschuss fair erbgesunde Kinder ", VB,

3 March, 1934.

4. August Mayer, Deutsche Mutter und deutscher Aufstieg, Munich, 1938,

pp. 17 -18.

5. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750184, BziL, 3 November, 1939.

 94.

part of a policy of repression in an atmosphere of growing hysteria

about the desperate need for Germans to reproduce as the war took

its toll of young lives. The final step in this policy was the

introduction of the death penalty in 1943 for anyone found to have

performed an abortionl.

The chief result of Nazi attempts to stamp out abortion and

at least limit contraception seems to have been to hinder the

development of a liberal policy towards birth control in the Federal

Republic; the Himmler Ordinance remained in force in most Lander

until 1961, while the near -suppression of the former birth -control

movement meant that a new campaign would have to start virtually

from scratch, again in the face of strong opposition from the Churches2.

Once again, the legal barrier is "paragraph 218 ", the 1926 abortion

law3. With regard to the Third Reich, it is clear that the Nazi aim

of completely eliminating abortion among the "racially and hereditarily

valuable ", and of eliminating contraceptive practice as far as

possible, was not realised. The measures the Nazis took were piece-

meal, and the loop -holes they left seem unaccountable, in the light of

1. Bolte and Kappe, op. cit., p. 45.

Hans Harmsen, op. cit., p. 403, says that during the war the
military authorities succeeded in exempting the condom from the
Himmler Ordinance, to prevent the spread of venereal disease.

2. D.V. Glass, "Family Planning Programmes in Western Europe ",

Population Studies, 1966, p. 229.

Bolte and Kappe, op. cit., p. 46.

3. Hans Harmsen, op. cit., P. 402.

"Abtreibung: Massenmord oder Privatsache ? ", Der Spiegel, 21 May,

1973, pp. 38 -58.
 95.

their obsession with the population issue. The basic reason must

be that the German people, in this matter as in so many others, did

not make an open demonstration of their opposition, but rather

continued to follow their own desires quietly, in deep secrecy if

necessary. Even with a huge army of spies and informers, the Nazis

found that they could not watch all of the people all of the time;

they were not even able to stamp out the last vestiges of organised

birth -control groups, although they came close to it. The long

history of birth control in Germany, with the widespread resort to

abortion if contraception had been unavailable, or had failed,

could not be eliminated from popular consciousness by a few laws

and even a mass of propaganda, so that in this area the Nazi aim

of creating a fully totalitarian state which controlled every aspect

of the life of its people came to nothing, as it was bound to.

Repression could achieve only the driving of these practices

underground, where popular demand ensured that, somehow, they were

continued.

D. The Unmarried Mother

The national emergency occasioned by the outbreak of the Great

War gave rise to a decision of the Reichstag on 4 April, 1914, that

all mothers of children whose fathers were serving soldiers should

receive financial support from the State, regardless of marital

status1. In spite of campaigns, particularly by the radical feminists2,

before the war for an end to the discrimination and disabilities

1. P. Krische in AfFr, 1931 -32, pp. 72 -73.

2. Evans, op. cit., pp. 174 -86 discusses the radicals' campaign.
 96.

suffered by unmarried mothers, this was the first relaxation of the

harsh attitude which the State and society held towards those women

who bore a child out of wedlock. After the war, the Weimar

Constitution pronounced that illegitimate children should be the

social equals of those born in wedlock; but it was clear from the

legislation proposed in this area in the 1920s that the reformers were

concerned only to remove the financial problems and the stigma which

accompanied illegitimacy, and did not envisage any radical change in

the position of the unmarried mother, who remained a social outcast.

Any benefit which might accrue to her from reforms was purely

incidental to what was felt to be best for the child1. If this was

the view of the liberals in the Republic, the conservatives were

even less inclined to help a fallen woman: the Evangelical Church,

for example, firmly maintained its hard -line attitude against "any

pre -marital or extra- marital sexual intercourse "2. The placing of

legitimate and illegitimate children, of married and unmarried mothers,

on an equal footing in the Soviet Union3 was seen as an example of

the kind of evils that would result from any relaxation of moral

standards.

Throughout the Weimar period, then, the lot of the unmarried

mother remained a hard one, particularly if she lived alone and was

obliged to work; little progress was made in finding an effective way

1. See, e.g., BA, 836/1438: parliamentary question no. 1706 by

Marie Elisabeth Luders et al., 23 June, 1922; letter from Mohr-
mann, of the Archiv Deutscher Berufsvormtinder e.V., to Oberbürg-
ermeister Mitzlaff, 15 January, 1926; letter from Mende, of the
Deutsches Archiv für Jugendwohlfahrt e.V., to the Deutscher
Städtetag/Preussischer Stddtetag, received 13 April, 1929.

2. "Aufruf des Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchenausschuss vom 25. Mai

1932 ", document in AfB, 1932, p. 96.

3. Halle, op. cit., p. 106.

 97.

of making the father support his childl. In spite of this, the

Civil Code still left the unmarried mother with no legal rights over

her child. Goldmann and Grotjahn found that a large proportion of

those in need of relief were unmarried mothers "who," they believed,

"must be accepted in Germany because of the surplus of women over men ".

They reported that in 1925 33% (133 out of 406) of the mothers insured

with the sickness fund of the AEG in Berlin were unmarried, and that
2
this proportion was matched in a number of the other funds . This was,

in fact, during the period when illegitimate births had been rising

quite consistently, from 8.5% of all live births in 1905 to 11.4% in

1920 and 12% in 1925; in addition, there had been a higher rate of

births out of wedlock in the peculiar circumstances of the last year

of the war, 1918, when a figure of 13% was reached for the only time

between 1905 and 1939. From the mid -1920s the illegitimacy rate

declined steadily, again dropping to the 1905 level in 1934, and then

falling even further to remain at 7.7% or 7.8f for the rest of the

1930s3. Thus, Nazi claims of restoring morality after the decadence

of Weimar were belied by the downward trend in the illegitimacy figures

from 1926; equally, allegations that the Nazis encouraged widespread

procreation outside marriage to boost the birth rate are unfounded in

1. Krische, op. cit., p. 72.

2. Franz Goldmann and Alfred Grotjahn, op. cit., p. 69.

3. Figures from St.J.: 1934, p. 27; 1937, p. 37; 1939/40, p. 42;

1941/42, p. 66. Since there was a higher rate of dead births
among illegitimate than legitimate children, the proportion of
unmarried women who carried children was higher than the figures
suggest; equally, the rate of infant mortality was higher among
the illegitimate, and so a smaller proportion of women than that
suggested by the figures had to bring up an illegitimate child.
 98.
the years 1933 -39, although the situation changed dramatically after

the outbreak of the Second World Warl.

At first, however, the Nazis did tend to associate unmarried

motherhood with the licentiousness they claimed was propagated by

the Marxists. An article in a Labour Front publication in August 1934

was thoroughly censorious, claiming that women who had a child out

of wedlock tended to be emotionally unstable, were often heavy drinkers,

psychopaths, or mentally ill, and therefore would often produce

children who could not, with their heredity, be considered of value to

the nation. There was a particular risk, continued the article, with

those women who had two or more children out of wedlock by different

fathers. It was, in any case, a fundamental tenet of National

Socialism that loose morals could not be tolerated, since they were

a threat to the family, which was the base of society. Thus,

concluded the article, the State and the nation might show compassion

to those "racially valuable" women who, in a moment of weakness,

conceived children out of wedlock, but they could not condone their

irresponsible behaviour2.

From the population point of view, the unmarried mother could

well have been considered a wasted asset. Even although there were

many more women than men in the population, the problem was that the

unmarried mother would normally have only the one child, as Himmler

realised, and so her maternal potential would not be fulfilled3.

1. Official statistics, which had consistently given the illegitimate

birth rate along with other population statistics since 1882, do
not provide figures for the number or rate of illegitimate births
in 1940, although they continue to give those for marriages, deaths,
live births, etc. in St.J., 1941/42, p. 66. It is tempting to
conclude that the figures were deliberately concealed because they
were so high.

2. "Klarheit: ", Der Deutsche, 11 August, 1934.

3. IfZ, MA 387, frame 5194, "Verein '.Lebensborn' e.V. ", 31 May, 1937.
 99.

There was some confusion in the ranks of the Nazi Party, with the

scruples of the puritans obviously in conflict with the desire to have

and to support "racially valuable" children; the result was that

little of material value was done in the 1930s to solve the problems

or raise the status of the unmarried mother. From 1933 she did receive

tax relief on her earnings to help her to maintain her child, and when

the tax levied on single persons to provide funds for the marriage -

loan scheme was described it was shown not to apply to unmarried

mothers'. This same ruling would, incidentally, apply to single women

- like Lea Thimm, the women's representative in the Nazi doctors'

organisation2 - who adopted children. No doubt to allay fears that

immorality was being encouraged by these meagre concessions, it was

explained that if the State afforded aid to the unmarried mother and

her child this did not denote its approval of what she had done3. But

in spite of the protests and the moral indignation exhibited in some

publications on the subject, it was slowly becoming clear that official

attitudes towards the unmarried mother were at last softening.

The first tangible sign of the direction in which official

policy was developing came in May 1937, with an order by the Minister

of Justice that unmarried women could elect to be called "Frau" instead

1. "Gesetz zur Verminderung der Arbeitslosigkeit ", RGB, 1933 I, 1 June,

1933, p. 327.

"Gesetz über die Einkommenbesteuerung für 1933 ", RGB, 1934 I, 21

December, 1933, p. 3.

2. BDC, Lea Thimm's Reichsärztekammer membership card, and answers to

a questionnaire for the Journalists' Association, 10 January, 1934.

3. Alice Rilke, "Die ehelose Mutter im nationalsozialistischen Staat ",

VB, 30 August, 1934.
 100.

of "Fr.ulein ", with a special provision that unmarried mothers must

be addressed as "Frau" in all official business if they chose this

designationl. Ironically, this had been something the radical sexual

reformers of the pre -war period had demanded2, and among even the

moderate feminists it had for long been customary to use the designation

" Frau" for mature women, regardless of marital status3. In this area,

then, with the provision of a single title for all women, if they so

chose, and the improvement in the status of unmarried mothers that

this implied, the Nazis were in line with the progressives of the

past whom they had so castigated, and with radical opinion that

developed some thirty years later than their own policy.

The Government found itself in a position where it would have

to make a decision about the status of the unmarried mother, since

the contentious issue of whether such a woman should be employed in

the service of the State had not been settled in the Weimar period.

In the summer of 1936 Frick called a meeting of interested parties to

try to frame a policy on this matter, and to settle those cases

currently under consideration4. One of these was a disagreement which

had arisen between the Minister of Posts, who had fined a single woman

1. BA, R22/41, order of the Minister of Justice, no. 2697, "Ftihrung

der Bezeichnung 'Frau' durch unverheiratete weibliche Personen ",
Reichshaushalts - und Besoldungsblatt no. 18, 21 June, 1937, p.
201.

2. Anthony, op. cit., pp. 108 -11 describes the campaign of the Bund
für Mutterschutz to eliminate the title "Fráulein ", particularly
to protect unmarried mothers.

3. See, e.g., correspondence between Gertrud Baumer and the friends

and acquaintances who were, like her, unmarried, in Beckmann, op.
cit., and BA, Kl.Erw., no. 296 -(1).

4. BA, R4311 /443, letter from Pfundtner to Lammers, 12 August, 1936.

 101.

employee for having a child and who favoured severity because of

the immoral act which had led to it, and Hess, who advocated leniency

and was campaigning against the punishment of F`räulein Wagner, the

lady in question. This case raised two issues, namely should a

woman be punished for having an illegitimate child, and, if so,

should the penalty be dismissal from or ineligibility for public

employment1.

A further meeting was called for the end of October 1936. Among

those invited were Himmler and Hess - who attended in person, as an

indication of their growing interest in this matter - and several

Ministers, who sent representatives; but Gertrud Scholtz- Klink, the

National Women's Leader, was not invited to discuss a matter which

was, after all, of immediate interest to women2. No decision was

reached, and the matter was left in the air while the general question

of attitudes to unmarried motherhood, particularly with reference to

its relevance for population policy, was discussed at length by a

committee of Ministers, Gauleiters and population pundits3. As an

interim measure, Hess, with the approval of Frick4, asked to be consulted

in every case where proceedings were being contemplated against a

woman official who had an illegitimate child, before a decision was

1. Ibid., notes by Seel at the Ministry of the Interior, 15 August, 1936.

2. BA, R4311/443, circular from Pfundtner to nine Ministers and

Secretaries of State, 13 October, 1936.

3. BA, R4311 /1523, circular from Pfundtner to 18 leading people in

Party and State, 31 May, 1937.

4. BA, 84311/427, letter from Pfundtner to the Reich Ministers, 13

December, 1938.
 102.

given, so that he might influence it if he chose1. Given the stand

Hess had taken in the case of Frgulein Wagner, it was probable that

he would generally intervene in favour of the woman concerned.

It was by now becoming clear that Himmler, too, was emerging

as a champion of the unmarried mother, because, he said, she should

be given credit for contributing to the population. No doubt he

realised that if there was a change in attitudes she might be

encouraged to have more children, whether out of wedlock and supported

by the State, or in marriage as she became a more acceptable partner.

But Himmler was extremely sensitive to suggestions that he was

positively in favour of unmarried motherhood, and was at pains to

refute rumours and complaints that his Lebensborn (Fount of Life)

Association was directed at encouraging conception and birth out of

wedlock. At the same time, he was anxious to point out that greater

tolerance

"does not bring down the married mother to a certain

level, but raises the unmarried mother to her proper place
in the community, since she is, during and after her
pregnancy, not a married or an unmarried woman, but a
mother".

The unmarried mother, said Himmler, was a particularly vulnerable

member of society whose legal interests, for example, required

special protection; therefore he had decided to assume legal guardianship

of illegitimate children where this seemed necessary, and, of course,

only in the cases of "racially and hereditarily valuable" children.

On the same racial basis, the Lebensborn homes for expectant and nursing

mothers also admitted married women2, and indeed one of their chief

1. Ibid., letter from Gramsch, the Prussian Prime Minister, to the

IMIinister of the Interior, 4 January, 1939.

2. IfZ, op. cit., frames 5189 -95.

 103.

functions lay in assisting the wives of SS men whose financial

position was precariousl. Even in May 1944 Himmler insisted that

the ratio of legitimate to illegitimate babies born in the homes

was "about 50 -50, more likely 60 -40 in favour of the legitimately

born babies "2.

The discussions which had been set in train by the meetings in

1936 clearly inclined towards a more enlightened attitude towards

the unmarried mother. One symptom of this was a report in late 1938

of a recent spate of films released in the Rhineland which

consistently featured the illegitimate child as a benefit to the

nation from the population point of view. The Rheinisch- est-

falische Zeitung, which carried the article, drily asked the film

industry to bear in mind that it was also possible to bring children

into the world after a marriage had taken place3. This episode was

indeed an attempt to gauge the climate of opinion in the country, and

to influence it away from the earlier view held widely within the

Party itself that equality for the unmarried mother and her child

would "degrade and undermine" marriage and family life4. But the

1. IfZ, Fa 202, letter from an SS officer on behalf of the Governing

Council of Lebensborn to SS officer Pohl, 21 June, 1938.

2. R. Manvell and H. Fraenkel, Heinrich Himmler, London, 1965,

pp. 93 -94. C.f. Richard Grunberger, "Lebensborn ", Bulletin of
the Wiener Library, July 1962, p. 52, who states that between
50A and 80¡ of the babies born in the homes were illegitimate.
Kersten reports Himmler as saying in May 1943 that married women
accounted for 50% of the confinements (op. cit., p. 180).

3. "Das interessante uneheliche Kind", Die Frau, December 1938, p. 162.

4. See, e.g., Else Vorwerck, "Gedanken fiber die Ehe im national-

sozialistischen Staat ", NS-Frauenbuch, Munich, 1934, pp. 147 -48.
 104.

difficulty of reaching agreement on a change of policy was such that

in 1940 it still had to be admitted that, after seven years of Nazi

rule, not the slightest change had been made in the legal position;

the relevant clauses of the Civil Code still stood, although the

SS, at least, clearly felt that they were out of date. Indeed there

had been lengthy discussions, particularly within the Nazi Lawyers'

Association, and several proposals had been made, but the very

number and variety of these were felt to be an indication of how

difficult a problem this was to solve'.

A decision was reached, however, within the restricted area

of the employment of an unmarried mother in the public service.

Early in 1939 the Minister of Justice expressed the view that the

bearing of an illegitimate child should not of itself ever be made

a reason for dismissal, although he would be inclined to a stricter

attitude if the circumstances leading to the pregnancy - for example,

if intercourse had taken place on official premises - gave the

impression that the woman had abused her position and was likely to

bring, her office into disrepute2. Six months later, the National

Institute for Youth Welfare wrote to Prick to press for tolerance in

this matter. Its argument was that the current climate of opinion, and

the Government's population policy, made it desirable that women to

whom there was no objection other than that they had had a child out of

wedlock should be accepted for public service positions, or retained in

1. IfZ, Fa 202, letter from the staff of "Lebensborn" to Himmler's

office, 15 February, 1940.

2. BA, R431I /427, letter from Freisler to the Reich Ministries, 13

January, 1939.
 105.

employment if the birth took place after their appointmentl. On

receipt of this letter, Frick issued a statement to the state

governments in the sense of the MIinister of Justice's earlier remarks,

asking that it be transmitted to the relevant authorities that the

circumstances of a conception, rather than the fact of a woman

official's having conceived, be the basis for any decision as to the

advisability of employing or dismissing an unmarried mother2.

This shift in official attitudes had taken place before Germany

was at war; once there was the prospect of heavy carnage among the

young men of the nation, the Government became obsessed with the

problem of raising the birth rate, by any means. Hess brought the

question of unmarried parenthood in this context into the open before

the year 1939 was out. He sent Frick a copy of a long letter he

had written to the pregnant fiance of a soldier killed in action,

with a request for a prompt regulation of the legal position of

women who found themselves in this position, and Frick complied by

sending out urgent invitations to discuss the matter3. Already,

however, Hess had taken the unilateral step of announcing that the

NSDAP would be prepared to assume the guardianship of children

whose fathers perished in the war, on the grounds that

"considerations, which are justifiable in normal times,

must for the present be overlooked.... What use is it if
a nation is victorious, but through the sacrifices made for
that victory it dies out ?"

Thus, men and women - of pure racial descent - who created a new

1. Ibid., letter from the Deutsches Institut für Jugendhilfe e.V.

to the Ministry of the Interior, 11 July, 1939.

2. Ibid., letter from Stuckart to the Land governments and the chief
Government officials, 14 July, 1939.

3. BA, R431I/1286, letter from Frick to Lammers, 24 December, 1939.

 106.

life were giving the nation in time of war the next most precious

thing to their own life, and should be honoured accordingly. Hess

added that he was convinced that the German people would come to share

his point of view before long, and that it would in future be

prepared to treat as equal with married mothers those

"who, perhaps outside the bounds of bourgeois morality

and custom, contribute to compensation for the blood
sacrificed in the war...for...the life of the nation
comes before all principles thought up by men, all
conventions which carry the mark of recognised custom
but not of morality, and before prejudice. The highest
service a woman can render to the community is the gift
of racially healthy children for the survival of the
nation "l.

Hess had managed to turn a message of comfort to a girl who

found herself in the most distressing circumstances into barely -

veiled encouragement for procreation outside marriage. His stand

was welcomed by the SS weekly paper Das Schwarze Korps, which went

on to agree that there must be a change in morals: in war, Himmler

was quoted as saying, no soldier can go to the front, possibly to

die, in peace of mind if he has not left heirs behind him. Therefore,

the names "war -time father" and "war -time mother" would signify that

in time of national emergency there were those who served their

country not only in the field or in the factory, but by their

contribution to the future of the nation by begetting and bearing

children. Under these circumstances, girls who refused to serve their

country by conceiving a child, out of wedlock if necessary, could be

compared with army deserters, while those who did have illegitimate

children could be secure in the knowledge that the State would welcome

1. Ibid., letter from Hess to the fiancée of a dead soldier, undated

(covering letter, above, dated 24 December, 1939).
 107.

and support them1. The entire tone of this article was nothing short

of revolutionary, and the response to it vindicated those who had

been on the side of caution in the matter of bringing in legislation

to promote legal and social equality for the unmarried mother and

her child.

It was, for example, hardly surprising that the Roman Catholic

Church spoke out very strongly against the new morality proposed

by Hess and the SS. At the festival of - appropriately enough - the

Holy Family in January 1940 the bishops' pastoral letter, which in

recent years had concentrated on attacking the Sterilisation Law,

criticised particularly Hess's much-publicised letter and Himmler's

frequent utterances supporting extra-marital procreation. Cardinal

Faulhaber, particularly, made it clear that the view of the Church

on the sanctity of marriage and the sinfulness of unchastity remained

what it had always been, and that the war could not alter it. The

Church was so incensed that, as Himmler's agents reported, in some

areas priests were telling their congregations that the war was God's

punishment for the moral depravity currently encouraged by the nation's

leadership2.

Others were not so sweeping in their condemnation of the new

morality; Gertrud Bäumer pointed out that the proposals now being made

by Party leaders for some regularising of the position of illegitimate

children were not dissimilar from those for which she and her associates

1. "Der Sieg der Frauen ", Das Schwarze Korps, 4 January, 1940.

2. BA, R58/147, MadR, 15 January, 1940.

IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750508, MadR, 22 December, 1939, reports a

Roman Catholic priest as saying publicly that Germany will lose
the war if the current increase in immorality is not reversed.
 108.

had consistently campaigned, as a matter of common sense. But she

also believed that there was a very sharp difference between

fathering a child and regarding fatherhood as a continuing commitment

within a family1. Her friend Dorothee von Velsen was quite horrified

by the article in Das Schwarze Korps, and also frustrated by the need

to keep her criticism private2. Gertrud Bäumer was, however, able to

take some comfort from the fact that, although she could not publish

her views, open opposition to the article had been voiced by the

women in the leadership of the Nazi women's organisation, who had

called SS officers to a meeting to face questions about it3. It is

clear, however, that the Nazi women were in no position to challenge

this change in policy, particularly since it was enunciated in time

of national emergency.

The SS was unrepentant, and its paper led demands for legal

action in favour of those who were "considered up till now 'illegitimate".

Financial aid for the unmarried mother was seen as a top priority,

and the suggestion was made that the needy might be paid a monthly

sum to enable them to support their child. In addition, there should,

said Das Schwarze Korps, be full medical facilities for the confinement,

a ban on the dismissal or demotion of the mother from work, and a

prison sentence for any who besmirched the good name of an unmarried

1. BA, Kl.Erw., no. 296 -(1), letter from Gertrud Baumer to Dorothee
von Velsen, 4 April, 1940.

2. Ibid., letter from Dorothee von Velsen to Gertrud Bäumer, 31 March,

1940.

3. Ibid., letter from Gertrud Bäumer to Dorothee von Velsen, 4 April,

1940.
 109.
mother1. But this enlightened policy - adopted as it was for

aggressive reasons - created financial problems which Himmler and

his men had apparently not foreseen. In summer 1940 Himmler reported

to Keitel that

"as a result of extensive troop movements illegitimate

pregnancies have reached an unprecedented height since
the beginning of the war.... The fathers of 90¡0 of the
illegitimate children born in the Lebensborn homes are
serving soldiers ".

Accordingly, the initial system, by which the homes had been financed

by a levy on SS men and used specifically for their children2, was

inadequate now that the homes had been opened to a far wider circle,

and so Himmler now asked that Keitel try to interest the army in the

work of Lebensborn and, more important, to put some of the funds at

the disposal of the army towards the upkeep of the homes3.

The Party responded to the new moral climate by awarding a

cash grant to full -time single women employees who had a child on the

same basis as to a married man who had a legitimate child4. And the

Government agreed to provide money grants to unmarried mothers who

were in need of support. But it operated in a rather half -hearted

way, carefully vetting each case to ensure that the claimant was indeed

in poor financial circumstances, and also of good character5. In the

1. "Ein Frau hat das Wort ", Das Schwarze Korps, 11 April, 1940.

2. IfZ, MA 387, frame 5189, "Verein 'Lebensborn' e.V. ", 31 May, 1937.

3. IfZ, Fa 202, letter from Himmler to Keitel, undated, ?late July,

1940.

4. IfZ, MA 135, frames 136153 -54, letters from the Kreisleitung

Erkelenz to its DAF and NSV officials, 3 February, 1941, and the
Gauschatzmeister of Cologne to his Kreisleitungen, 30 January,
1941.

to the
5. BA, R431I/1286a, letter from Erich, in the Chancellery,
February, 1941.
Gauleitung in South Hanover-Brunswick, 12
 110.

case of one Helene Richter, however, a lump sum of RM 125 was

recommended in spite of the fact that she had previously been

jailed for assisting with abortions. It was said that her character

was otherwise good and, at least as important, that she seemed to be

thoroughly "politically reliable "1. But in approving this grant an

official in the Chancellery wrote to Helene Richter to emphasise that

grants could in fact be made only in exceptional cases

"since the means for them are small. I therefore ask you
not to acquaint others with the fact that you have been
given aid, so as not to encourage the submitting of
applications which are hopeless, and can result only in
disappointmenti2

The high idealism of the SS caused dismay among the bureaucrats who

had to operate the system and who were well aware that the Government

could not suddenly assume financial responsibility for the large

numbers of children that Himmler, oblivious to the financial

implications of his scheme, was encouraging.

Himmler continued for the rest of the war to be obsessed by

the problems of overcoming "middle -class convention" and "defying

existing laws and explaining to my men that children are always a

great blessing, legitimate or not ". He admitted to Kersten in 1943

that he had already, discreetly, given notice that women anxious to

have children could have'acially pure" men provided as "conception

assistants "; only a few women had responded so far, but Himmler hoped

to extend the scheme greatly after the war, even to make it compulsory,

eventually, for women of good stock. Together with Bormann, he also

1. Ibid., letter from the Hanover Chief of Police to the Chancellery,

13 March, 1941.

2. Ibid., letter from Meerwald, in the Chancellery, to Helene Richter,

25 July, 1941.
had plans for encouraging bigamy. His explanation was that

"There is one purpose behind all these measures...to

safeguard and improve the racial qualities of the Greater
German Reich, so that it can accomplish its great tasks
both in the centre of Europe and against the increasing
avalanche of Asian peoples "1.

Now, it cannot be disputed that a more enlightened attitude towards

the unmarried mother and her child than that current in most parts

of inter -war Europe was thoroughly desirable; but Himrnler's motives

were completely indefensible. What he, Hess - before his "mission"

to Scotland in 1941 - and Bormann proposed, besides, was nothing

short of a revolution, which would drastically alter the nature, and

perhaps even threaten the existence, of the family unit which the

Nazis had originally pledged themselves to preserve and promote.

The benefit which may have accrued to the unmarried mother - provided

that she was "racially valuable" - was, as in the Weimar period,

purely incidental, this time, however, not to the welfare of the

child but to the naked power ambitions of the Nazi leadership.

1. Kersten, op. cit., pp. 176 -82.

Hans -Jürgen Lutzhöft, Der nordische Gedanke in Deutschland

1920-1940, Stuttgart, 1971, pp. 395 -96.
 112.

CHAPTER THREE

The Employment of Women outside the Home

Introduction

A discussion of the employment of women in the 1930s must

centre on Nazi policy. It has been generally accepted that the Nazis

aimed to reduce, or even eliminate, the employment of women outside

the home, particularly as a means of easing the unemployment problems

Germany faced in the early 1930s; but the extent to which the Nazis

actually pursued this goal, and the means they used, have barely been

considered. Equally, it is now accepted that the Nazis were forced

to try to encourage women to enter employment in the later 1930s, as

the regime's power ambitions led to the development of an economy

geared to the possibility of limited war; but while Dr. Mason has dealt

with some aspects of this subjectl, there has been no thorough -going

investigation of it. The aim of this chapter is to try to remedy

these deficiencies, by setting the question of women's employment in

its context after the Great War, by showing how Nazi attempts to reduce

women's employment were largely based on false premises, and soon

abandoned, by discussing the Nazis' organisation for supervising women

workers and attending to their welfare - largely for reasons of

population policy - and by considering the attempts of the Nazi

Government to persuade, cajole or even coerce women into work once

Germany was at war in the autumn of 1939. The signal failure of these

attempts reinforces suggestions made by other writers2 that while the

1. T. W. Mason, "National Socialist Policies towards the German

Working Classes ", unpublished Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1971,
pp. 614 -23, 648 -49.

2. Ibid., pp. 590 -96, 605, 642.

H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, London, 1972 (9th

revised printing), pp. 53 -54.
 113.

Nazi regime was indeed dictatorial, it was unable to force its

will on the German people when there was confusion and disagreement

within the upper echelons of Party and Government, and when there

was deep- rooted opposition to its policies.

A. The Employment of Women after the Great War

The Great iar, with its heavy toll of male casualtiesl, and

the inflation consequent upon the war, were important in increasing

the scope and extent of women's employment outside the home beyond

the considerable dimensions they had reached before 1914. It was,

however, the rationalisation of industry and business, following the

stabilisation of the currency in 1924, which had the most profound

impact on this development: mechanisation, one of its major

characteristics, led directly to a fundamental change in the demand

for various types of labour. 'Tasks which had previously been

performed by skilled workers - and this meant almost exclusively by

men - could now be carried out much more efficiently by machines,

for whose operation cheaper semi -skilled or even unskilled labour

sufficed. It rapidly became apparent to employers that women were

far preferable to men for this kind of work, for two reasons: first,

and most obviously, women were cheaper to employ, with even skilled

women paid at a lower rate than unskilled men; but at least as

important was the discovery that women actually tended to be better

machine operators than men. This was the case not only in wage -earning

occupations; the real revolution was in white -collar jobs, where

the increasing use of the typewriter and the calculating machine

1. Figures illustrating the effect this had on the sex ratio in

Germany after the Great War have been given on p. 44.
 114.

facilitated the replacement of men with skills which had formerly

been essential by women whose dexterity and acceptance of monotonous

work only enhanced their advantage, already strong from the financial

point of view1.

The 1925 census showed that about one -third of the 3.5 million

employees in white- collar occupations were women2, which Kracauer

attributed to the need for more women than formerly to support

themselves after the war3. This view was confirmed by an inquiry

carried out in 1929 which revealed that 93% of the sample of women

interviewed were unmarried, and that their age distribution indicated

that for many employment was not merely a temporary stage in their

life but a career4. About a quarter of a million white -collar women

workers were members of unions in the later 1920s5, and these led a

campaign to try to achieve equal pay for women in clerical jobs °.

In fact, women employees were paid on average between 10% and 15%

less than men in the same grade of job; and on the whole women were

1. Judith Grünfeld, "Frauenarbeit im Lichte der Rationalisierung", Die

Arbeit, 1931, no. 12, pp. 911 -13, 922.

Ludwig Preller, Sozialpolitik in der Weimarer Republik, Stuttgart,

1949, pp. 115, 125, 136.

2. Report in WuS, 1930, no. 13, P. 558.

3. Siegfried Kracauer, Die Angestellten, Frankfurt, 1930 (reprinted

by Verlag für Demoskopie, Allensbach and Bonn, 195)), p. 5.

4. Report in FiS, January 1930, p. 10.

5. Figures from St.J.: 1927, pp. 511 -12; 1928, pp. 592 -93.

6. Maria Hellersberg, "Die soziale Not der weiblichen Angestellten ",

speech made on 15 January, 1928, at a congress of women white -
collar workers, printed as no. 43 of Schriftenreihe des Gewerk-
schaftsbundes der Angestellten, Berlin, 1928, pp. 22 -23.
 115.

to be found in the lower- grade, poorly -paid positionsl. When the

depression came, it hit white- collar workers as a group much less

severely than it hit industrial workers, although there were many

cases of individual hardship among them2. Men and women in offices

and shops suffered to a similar extent: women accounted for 41.0

of the unemployed in these positions in 19323, while the 1933 census

showed that they constituted 42.2% of all employees in these areas4.

In industry, the fields in which women had traditionally been

chiefly employed were textiles and clothing, which together accounted

for about half of all women in industry in the first quarter of

the twentieth century. In 1925, over 1.5 million women, out of a

total of 2.9 million in industry, were employed in these two areas.

In third position came the food, drink and tobacco industries, with

over 400,000 women between them5. But in the 1920s women were also

beginning to figure in industries in which they had formerly been

represented either negligibly or not at all; a case in point was the

metal industry, where some works recorded the employment of women

for the first time in the 1925 census return6. In the later 1920s

1. Ibid.

Kracauer, op. cit., p. 7.

Herta Schmidt, "Die Berufsarbeit der Frau ", FiS, May 1931, p. 6.

2. Kracauer, op. cit., pp. 38 -39, vividly describes some examples of

this.

3. Calculated from figures in St.J., 1933, p. 291.

4. Figures from St.D.R., vol. 451, part 3, p. 40.

5. Figures from St.J., 1933, p. 22. For comparison, the 1925 census
also recorded that there were a million female domestic servants
(op. cit., p. 23).

6. A. Vallentin, "The Employment of Women Since the War ", ILR, vol.
25, 1932, pp. 493 -94.
 116.

this trend greatly intensified, partly as a result of the

rationalisation process generally, and partly because employers saw

the employment of cheaper female labour as the only way of keeping

down costs at a time when wages generally had risen, since the war.

An additional factor was that women were therefore once more, as

in war -time, being increasingly employed in work, particularly with

heavy machinery, which was extremely unsuitable for them1. There was

growing anxiety about this, particularly when young girls were involved,

since it was becoming apparent that their physical development was

suffering, so that their ability to bear healthy children was being

diminished by work where there was extreme heat, dirt, dust, and by

the need to stand continuously for hours to work a machine2.

To try to combat the worst effects of industrial work on women

and young people a piecemeal scheme of labour protection had been

built up in the later 19th century. Article 157 of the Weimar

Constitution had promised the introduction of a unified system of

labour legislation to protect all workers as far as possible from

danger and damaging conditions at work, but this was yet another pious

hope which came to nothing in the political and economic difficulties

of the 1920s. Women, however, benefited from a law, operative in 1927,

which brought Germany into line with the Washington Convention of 1919

in the matter of employing women before and after child-birth3. This

provided for up to twelve weeks' leave around the confinement, during

1. Judith Grünfeld, op. cit., pp. 912 -17.

2. Ibid., p. 921.

Hildegard Jungst, Die Jugendliche Fabrikarbeiterin, Paderborn, 1929,

pp. 36 -38.

3. "Arbeiterinnen- und Mutterschutz ", JADG, 1927, p. 204.

 117.

which time maternity benefit was payable by the sickness funds,

dismissal was illegal, and on returning to work a nursing mother was

to be allowed time for feeding her baby1. The Free Trade Unions

admitted that this was a real improvement, but pointed out that it

was only the first step towards a proper, comprehensive labour

protection system2. The depression, however, put their demands

beyond the realm of possibility in the short term, as they acknowledged

at the end of 1930, accepting that it was hard enough for the

exchequer to find money even to operate the 1927 law3.

In spite of the economic difficulties, however, the Government

continued to demonstrate interest in labour protection, with the

reintroduction in 1930 of earlier measures, repealed during the war,

to protect women working in glassworks, rolling -mills and foundries4.

Medical investigations into the effects of certain industries on

women's physiology - particularly from the gynaecological point of

view - were carried out which showed, for example, that women working

in tobacco factories were highly susceptible to nicotine poisoning

which contributed to a high rate of miscarriages among them and infant

mortality among their offsprings - a serious finding for a nation with

1. Johannes Feig, "The New Labour Protection Bill ", ILR, vol. 15, 1927,
p. 190.

2. JADG, op. cit., pp. 205 -07.

3. Report in JADG, 1930, p. 194.

4. Ibid.

"Verordnung über die Beschäftigung von Arbeitern unter achtzehn

Jahren und von Arbeiterinnen in der Glasindustrie ", RGB, 1930 I,
26 March 1930, p. 105.

5. S. M. Klein in AfFr, 1931-32, pp. 34-43.

M. Sserdjnkoff in AfFr, 1932, pp. 264-65.

 118.

a declining birth rate. Even in the textile industry, where large

numbers of women had been employed for long enough, conditions were

found to be poor, with inadequate lighting and ventilation in factories

and an insufficiency of seating and toilet facilitiesl. Clearly,

much was still left to be desired in German labour legislation, but

equally clearly the growing interest in conditions at work suggested

that further legislation would be contemplated in an improved economic

situation.

The two largest trade union groupings, the Free and the

Christian unions, were unequivocally in favour of special protection

for women at work2, no doubt at least partly because of the relative

strength of their women's sections3. Although numbers - and women's

share - dropped in the 1920s after a peak in 1920, when women's share

in both combines was about one -fifth, the total membership revived

modestly with the depression biting, so that in 1930 there were

altogether 4.7 million members of the Free unions and three -quarters of

a million in the Christian unions. But the decline of women's share to

14% in both groups4 seemed to confirm the view that women were readier

1. Annemarie Hermberg, "'Mein Arbeitstag - Mein Wochenend", Die

Arbeit, 1931, no. 2, p. 168.

2. JADG, 1927, op. cit., p. 205.

IfZ, MA 422, frames 5- 455196 -97, letter from Mina Amann to the
leaders of unions in the Christian Trade Union movement, 23 June,
1931.

3. Marguerite Thibert, "The Economic Depression and the Employment of

Women ", ILR, vol. 27, 1933, p. 461, states that Germany had a much
larger women's membership in the trade unions than many countries.

4. Figures from St.J.: 1921/22, p. 458; 1923, p. 436; 1928, pp. 594 -95;
1931, p. 558; 1932, p. 557.
 119.

to give up union membership in times of high unemployment1. The

Free unions undertook a massive campaign, led by Gertrud Hanna, to

attract more women2, and support for improved conditions at work was

no doubt regarded as good propaganda for this purpose.

But there were those who saw labour protection as a way of

putting women at a disadvantage on the labour market, and who

suspected - not without some justification - that the male -dominated

trade unions promoted it for precisely this reason. In June 1929 the

Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman

Worker was founded in Berlin, for the following purpose:

"To secure that a woman shall be free to work and

protected as a worker on the same terms as a man, and that
legislation and regulations...shall be based upon the nature
of the work and not upon the sex of the worker; and to secure
for a woman, irrespective of marriage or childbirth, the
right at all times to decide whether or not she shall engage
in paid work, and to ensure that no legislation or regulations
shall deprive her of this right"3.

The aim of the Open Door, then, was to achieve complete, literal,

and even absurd equality for women. Its chief supporters in Germany

were to be found among the radical feminists4, who felt that special

protection for women robbed them of the right to choose the kind of

work they would dos. The trade unions were completely opposed to the

1. Marguerite Thibert, op. cit., p. 462.

2. "Frauenarbeit und Gewerkschaften ", Gewerkschaftszeitung, 11 January,

1930, pp. 21 -22.

3. Report of the Third Conference of the Open Door International,

Prague, July 24 -28, 1933, p. 43. The ODI's headquarters were in
London.

4. Lida Gustava Heymann, "The Open Door Council ", FiS, May 1929, p. 1.

5. Th8nnessen, op. cit., p. 166.

 120.

Open Door, regarding it on the one hand as an embarrassment and on

the other as a threat to the development of further protective

legislation, even if it could not undo what had already been achieved'.

On the whole, the new organisation made little impact in Germany,

seeming largely irrelevant in the economic crisis, but it did continue

to hold international conferences during the 1930s, abroad2.

The expansion of women's employment after the Great 'Jar would

have been desirable if the German economy had also been expanding,

as it had done before the war. But in a situation where it was jobs,

and not labour, that were in short supply, a situation intensified

by mechanisation on a large scale, the influx of an increased number

of women onto the labour market was potentially serious. With

recession setting in, in late 1927, to be compounded in 1930 by deep

depression, it became a real problem. The reason for the increase

in the female labour force was attributed by Agnes von Zahn -Harnack,

President of the BDF, to technical improvements in the home and to

smaller families, which had made the occupation of wife and mother a

less full-time one than formerly3; but she can have been referring

only to her own constituency, the middle class. It was a much more

widely-held view that working-class women worked almost exclusively

1. Report in JADG, 1930, p. 191.

IfZ, loc. cit.

2. After the Prague Conference in 1933, conferences were held in

Copenhagen in 1935 and Cambridge in 1938. Belgium, Czechoslovakia,
Denmark, Britain and Sweden were the chief centres of the
movement's activity after 1933, the emigration of the chief German
representatives bringing activity there to an end.
See the reports of the Copenhagen and Cambridge Conferences.

3. "Das Berufsschicksal der weiblichen Jugend ", BF, November 1931, p. 2.

 121..

out of necessity1. This double burden of a full -time job and a

family to care for after work was oppressive to many, and led a

commentator to remark: "The working-class wife is the tragic figure

of our age "2.

In addition to factors which forced or encouraged women to take

a job in the 1920s, there was another reason for the vast increase in

the number of women in employment, from 8.5 million in 1907 to 11.5

million in 1925. In 1907, only about half of the very large number

of Germans born since the founding of the Empire were of working age,

while in 1925 almost all of those born in the decades of the high birth

rate before the Great Wax were of working age. Even given the losses

in the war, the number of men in employment had risen between 1907

and 1925, although the overall result had been to increase women's share

in the labour force by 2 %, to almost 36% of the totals. A change in the

supply of labour would, however, become apparent, but not until about

1935, when those born in the 1870s began to retire, to be only

partially replaced by those born in the lean war and post -war years of

1. Agnes Karbe, Die Frauenlohnfrage, Rostock, 1928, pp. 88, 130.

Gertrud Hanna, "Vom Kampf gegen die verheirateten erwerbstätigen

Frauen ", Die Arbeit, 1931, p. 259.

Schwabach, op. cit., p. 95.

2. Ibid., p. 132.

3. Figures from St.J., 1930, p. 23. The 1907 figures are given in
adjusted form, taking the loss of population in 1919 into account,
to give comparability.

A. Vallentin, op. cit., p. 492, comments on the relationship between

the growth of the population and that of the labour force.
 122.

birth.

For the time being, then, the absolute number of people of

working age continued to grow. But, according to official estimates,

the increase was greater among men than among women after 1925; in

fact, in 1929 and 1930 the total number of women in the labour force

actually declined, by 25,000 and 94,000 respectively, while men's

numbers still increased, although at a slower rate. But the most

significant feature was that the decline in women's numbers was due

solely to a drop in the number of single women in the labour force,

from 1927, while the number of married women showed a net rise

every year, even in 1930, when there had been a reduction of 25,000

in the total number of working people compared with 19291. These

figures would not, of course, be known to the mass of the population,

and even those writing about the employment situation in the early

1930s generally based their comments on the results of the 1925

census; nevertheless, the situation represented by these figures must

have created the general impression that more and more married

women were working, at a time of rising unemployment.

As jobs became ever scarcer2, employers had the pick of the

labour market, and often they chose to employ women, as cheaper

labour, while men lost their jobs; the result was that in many cases

a wife would have to work to support the family, on a wage lower than

that previously earned by her husband, because she could find work and

1. Report in WuS, loc. cit.

2. Official statistics on those receiving unemployment benefit or

emergency relief give total numbers of 1.06 million in October
1929, 1.98 million in December 1929, and 2.66 million in
February 1930. Figures from Vierteljahrshefte Mr Statistik des
Deutschen Reiches, 1930, vol. 1, p. 141.
 123.

he could not1. In spite of the narrowing of the differential

between men's and women's wages, as a result primarily of the war

but also of the 1923 inflation2, women were left with take -home pay

which was considerably lower than men's. Even in the textile

industry, a female stronghold, where women tended to do the same kind

of work as men, women spinners in 1930 still received only two -thirds

of the hourly wage rate paid to men, although women weavers fared

rather better, with 83% of men's rates3. This latter figure was,

however, exceptionally high; across a broader spectrum of industry it

was found, in 1928, that skilled and semi -skilled women - unfortunately

usually classed together - earned about 63íá of a skilled man's wage,

while unskilled women earned 52%. Unskilled men, by contrast,

earned 7870 of a skilled man's wage. In 1932, after the wage cuts

introduced by the Government to try to combat the depression, the

relative positions were broadly the same as in 19284. It was,

therefore, still advantageous to an employer to take on a skilled

woman, to whom he could pay a lower wage than that payable to an

unskilled man.

But their relative inexpensiveness was not the only reason

for women's continuing to work as men were laid off. Even more

important was the fact that women were chiefly to be found in those

sectors of the economy which were less severely affected by the

depression. Women were predominantly employed in the consumer goods

1. Karbe, op. cit., p. 113.

2. Bry, op. cit., p. 96.

3. Calculated from figures in St.J., 1933, p. 272.

4. Calculated from figures in "The General Level of Wages in Mines,

Industries and Transport ", ILR, 1938, vol. 37, p. 105.
 124.

industries, which maintained a reasonable level of output during

the crisis: although employment in relation to total labour capacity

in this area dropped to 48`'jó throughout the second half of 1932,

it remained above 60% most of the time in the food, textile and

luxury industriesl, in which, together, women constituted almost

half of the labour force. By contrast, women's share in industry

as a whole was less than a quarter2. On the other hand, the

production goods industries suffered much more, with employment in

relation to total capacity as low as 35% throughout 1932. The area

affected worst of all was the building trade, which could reach a

figure of only 23% in summer 1932, with figures catastrophically low

- at 12% at the start of 1932 and 14% at the start of 1933 - as its

seasonal character compounded the effects of the crisis3. The

building trade - accounting for 9A of all unemployment in 1932 -

was almost exclusively a male preserve, employing women as less than

2g of its labour force. The other area which was disastrously hit

was the metal industry, in which women comprised less than 4% of the

work force4.

These details contributed to a picture where women, constituting

35% of all working people in Germany, accounted for just under 20%

of the unemployed in 1931 and 1932, the worst years of the crisis5.

1. Figures from St.J., 1933, p. 309.

2. The 1925 census showed that women's share in the three industries
mentioned was 46%, while that in industry as a whole was 23dó.
Figures calculated from information in St.J., 1930, p. 88.

3. Figures from St.J., 1933, loc. cit.

4. Calculated from figures in St.J., 1930, loc. cit.

5. Figures from St.J., 1933, p. 291.

 125.

Even if it is accepted that some women who lost their jobs

probably did not register as unemployed, it is nevertheless clear

that women survived the economic crisis better than men, very

largely because a reasonable level of demand was maintained in

those industries in which they chiefly figured, while they were

employed in relatively insignificant numbers in those industries which

bore the major burden of the unemployment. But whatever the reason,

the impression was growing that women, by occupying jobs, were

keeping men out of work; the response to this was a growing campaign

from the autumn of 1930 to replace women who had jobs by unemployed

men.

B. The Campaign against the Woman Worker, 1930 -34

The 1925 census had shown that 68° of all employed women

were single, widowed or divorced1; these would probably have to

support themselves, and perhaps also dependants in addition - almost

always on a lower income than men, as a radical feminist pointed

out2. Nevertheless, in December 1930 the Economics Party proposed

that the employment of women generally - and particularly of women

holding what they termed "men's positions" - should be restricted,

unless they had absolutely no other means of support. This clear

attack on the wives and daughters of employed men reinforced an

attack made by a right -wing white-collar union on the daughters of

wealthy families who had a job and therefore "increased the misery of

those who have no -one to provide for them "3. It was certainly true

1. Calculated from figures in St.D.R., no. 451, part 3, p. 76.

2. Herta Schmidt, loc. cit.

3. Gertrud Hanna, op. cit., p. 260.

 126.

that girls from prosperous middle -class families were to be found

in clerical jobs, working for pocket money rather than for

subsistence', but they were only a tiny minority of employed women.

However, those who attacked the employment of women in time of

depression often did so for ideological reasons rather than because

they believed that the removal of women from jobs would solve the

unemployment problem. The Churches, with their view of the place of

women in family life, were a case in point2. And the Nazis, in their

anxiety about the birth rate, claimed that the present situation

degraded women, prevented their devoting themselves to family life,

and deprived "fathers of families" of the right to work3.

If there were some generalised attacks on the employment of

women as a group, the main burden of complaint was against the

married woman who had a job, who, it was claimed, was giving some

families an extra wage, over and above that earned by the actual

breadwinner, the father, while in other families - as a consequence,

it was implied - the breadwinner was without work. These women, the

Doppelverdiener, were felt to be not only depriving able men of work,

but were even threatening the very existence of whole families. It

was thus against them that the full force of official concern and

widespread unofficial propaganda rie directed.

1. Kracauer, op. cit., p. 65.

2. Grete Stoffel, "Die Arbeitslosigkeit und die Frauenarbeit ", FiS,

August /September 1931, p. 6.

Leo Zodrow, "Die Doppelbelastung der Frau in Familie und

Erwerbsberuf", Stimmen der Zeit, vol. 171, 1962 -63, p. 376.

3. Karl Fiehler, "Sozialgesetzgebung", Nationalsozialistisches

Jahrbuch, 1927, pp. 122 -23.

Report in VB, 4 April, 1934.

 127.

Early in 1931, the Minister of Employment, Stegerwald,

asked a commission to consider the possibility of legislation to

restrict the Doppelverdiener; but it was on the basis of the

commission's report that he decided against such a course. Instead,

he instructed the Employment Exchanges that where they had to place

applicants for jobs, they should take the social circumstances of

candidates of equal suitability into account. In addition, he

announced that he would write to employers to ask them to co- operate

by making their choice of labour - for firing or hiring - at least

partially dependent on whether the person involved was or would be

bringing a second income into a home. Stegerwald was convinced that,

for psychological reasons, the exchanges would have to be seen to be

taking some action to restrict the employment of the Doppelverdiener1.

It was clear that this measure was indeed directed primarily against

married women, since the Minister added that it should not be applied

to young people living with their parents, in case their long -term

career prospects might suffer2. The Brüning Government, then, was

anxious to take action, and to be seen to be taking action; but even

in this emergency it was unwilling - or, perhaps, unable - to

legislate.

The attacks on employed married women were met by defence of her

position from a number of quarters. Although many men trade unionists

were prepared to join in the attacks, the large and influential

socialist federation of unions, the ADGB (General German Trade Union

Association) repeatedly reminded its members that its position was clear,

1. Report in RAB, 1931 I, no. 15, 25 May, 1931, pp. 101 -02.

2. Report in RAB, 1931 I, no. 18, 25 June, 1931, p. 137.

 128.

namely that it opposed the campaign against the employment of

married women since it infringed their rights and would not achieve

its aim - of eliminating unemployment - anywayl. By 1930, the

ADGB had decided that the only way to prevent women from being given

preference over men simply because they were cheaper to employ

would be to launch a concerted attack to achieve better wages for

women2. But this of itself would not solve the problems of families

where the man's wage was so low that the wife had to work, to help

to feed and clothe her children, not to buy them luxuries3. This

situation, said the Communist Party, was a natural result of the

capitalist system, where in a crisis the employers still managed to

come out on top, by reducing wages and pocketing the amount they

saved. :ibmen, "the weakest part of the proletariat ", were paid

miserable wages because employers believed them to be more docile4.

Alone of political parties the KPD unequivocally demanded the

abolition of wage differentials altogether, and the upholding of

a woman's right to work on equal terms with mend.

The many women who jumped to the defence of their own- sex did

1. Report in JADG, 1930, pp. 193 -94.

2. Gewerkschaftszeitung, op. cit., p. 23.

3. Judith Grlinfeld, op. cit., pp. 921 -24.

Karbe, op. cit., pp. 88, 130, 136.

4. BA, R451V/10, "Die Auswirkungen der Papennotverordnung für die

Frauen", pp. 1 -2.

5. BA, R2/18554, Reichstag motion no. 1201, 15 October, 1931, signed

by Communist deputies.
 129.

not, however, tend to argue that women should have equal rights

with men in the employment market in time of depression; they

concentrated on trying to disprove the case that the dismissal of

the Doppelverdiener would solve the unemployment problem. Even the

radical feminist Grete Stoffel affirmed the priority of men with

families to support, although she did suggest that any "double

earnings" rule should equally allow for the dismissal of the husband

of a woman who owned a businessl. Gertrud Hanna, leader of the

ADGB's women's section2, pointed out that the vast majority of

wives listed in 1925 as employed were still working in 1931, in

spite of the mounting campaign against them, because "it could not

be otherwise ". Her analysis of the distribution of the 3.7 million

married women listed as employed showed that by far the largest

group, some 77% of the total, were classed as "assisting family

members ", who worked full -time, but not for a fixed wage, in their

husband's business; and three- quarters of these, or slightly more

than two million, were engaged in agriculture. Gertrud Hanna claimed,

rightly, that these women could only in very exceptional cases be

replaced by unemployed men, who would have to be paid a fair wage;

in addition, if these women were obliged to give up their job, many

would have to dismiss paid help from the household, which would

certainly be harmful to the labour market3.

A few months later, Maria Hellersberg gave a similar analysis in

1. Grete Stoffel, op. cit., p. 5.

2. Gewerkschaftszeitung, op. cit., p. 22.

3. Gertrud Hanna, op. cit., p. 254.

 130.

the relatively conservative magazine Die Bayerische Frau, and went

on to point out that a further two categories of working married

women could be eliminated from consideration as Doppelverdiener

who could be dismissed. The 309,000 women with their own business

could hardly be replaced by men, for obvious reasons, she said;

presumably this was because their jobs would not have existed without

them. In addition, the 44,000 married women in domestic service

might be replaceable "in individual cases" by unemployed single

women, but certainly not by men. That left the wage -earning, salary -

earning and professional married women, and Maria Hellersberg

whittled their numbers down to half a million by eliminating about

276,000 women in the textile, clothing and food industries in areas

where, she pointed out, only a very few men had ever been employed1.

Marguerite Thibert subtracted another large group, arguing that

children's nurses, dressmakers and milliners could hardly be replaced

by unemployed men. The highest number of working married women who,

she estimated, were in jobs which men could do equally well was 200,000,

a figure already suggested by Else LClders in the Employment Ministry's

official gazette2. And these 200,000 women could hardly, as

Marguerite Thibert somewhat drily remarked, be replaced by the four

million or more men who were unemployed in 1931 -323.

Given the mounting opposition to the employment of married

women, particularly, in the depression, it might have been expected

1. Maria Hellersberg, "Die Berufsarbeit der Frau ", BF, February 1932,
p. 2. Maria Hellersberg was a leading member of the white -collar
union the Gewerkschaftsbund der Angestellten.

2. Else Luders, "Die Erhaltung der Familie in der Gegenwart ", RAB,
1931 II, no. 7, 5 March, 1931, p. 108.

3. Marguerite Thibert, op. cit., p. 622.

 131.

that they would find it harder than men to obtain unemployment

benefit. The institution of what amounted to a household means

test before emergency relief would be granted, in 1ß301, was one way

in which a wife - or a daughter, for that matter - could find her

chances of receiving State support much reduced. But at the

worst of the crisis women were still receiving benefit more or less

to the same extent as men: in 1932, women's share among the recipients

of the two main kinds of support, unemployment benefit and emergency

relief, was 19.95 and 19.45 respectively, at a time when their

proportion among the registered unemployed was 19.9%2. Thus it is

clear that the number of unemployed women, including married women,

who were found not to be in need of support was very small indeed,

reinforcing claims made before and during the depression that most

married women worked out of dire necessity. Not only, then, did

women generally withstand the depression better than men; they also

had an even chance with men of obtaining support from public funds.

If this was because women's need was as great as men's, it was

nevertheless hardly likely to mollify those who believed that there

should be positive discrimination in favour of men.

In fact men did benefit marginally more than women from the

work creation programme begun tentatively by Bruning before his

dismissal. The Labour Service, for which public funds were provided

1. "Verordnung über die Krisenfürsorge für Arbeitslose ", RGB, 1930

I, 11 October, 1930, pp. 463 -64.

2. Calculated from figures in St.J., 1933, p. 299.

 132.

by a law passed in July 19311, was largely a male concern, with

only
5,000 of the 175,000 places available in January 1933 allotted
to

women2. But these numbers were minute compared with the problem the

Labour Service was supposed to be helping to solve. Nevertheless,

hardship was greatly eased in a few individual cases; for example,

the DVP's Women's Review described in glowing terms how it had become

possible to provide work for redundant women office workers by setting

them to work mending clothes and cooking in return for Labour Service

remuneration 3 . Much of the time women were used for similar domestic

purposes; while the men were gathered together in camps to undertake

work in agriculture or in public works schemes, in return for board,

lodgings and pocket money4, the women were generally put to work cooking

and cleaning for them5. On a smaller scale, the Red Cross in Bremen

1. "Verordnung fiber die Förderung des freiwilligen Arbeitsdienst ",

RGB, 1931 I, 23 July, 1931, pp. 398 -400.

2. Burgstaller, "Der Deutsche Frauenarbeitsdienst ", NS- Frauen-

I'diaria

buch, Munich, 1934, p. 26.

In fact, in January 1932 the Labour Service consisted of 14,000

volunteers, constituting 0.2% of the total number of registered
unemployed; in November 1932, 285,000 (5.0 of the registered
unemployed) gave the best figure for the Labour Service before the
Nazi takeover. Figures from St.J.: 1933, p. 306; 1934, p. 302.

3. BA, R451I/64, DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Frauenrundschau, 13

January, 1932, "Erwerbslosenhilfe durch freiwilligen Arbeitsdienst",
p. 1103.

4. This is described in detail in Hans Freising, "Entstehung und

Aufbau des Arbeitsdienstes im Deutschen Reich ", doctoral dissertation
for Rostock University, 1937, pp. 21 -32. See also P. W. van den
Nieuwenhuysen, De Nationaalsocialistische Arbeidsdienst, Louvain,
1939, pp. 26 -27.

5. Toni Saring, Die Deutsche Frauenarbeitsdienst, Berlin, 1934, pp. 74-

75.
 133.

was paying subsistence wages to 25 unemployed girls, who were brought

together to make and repair garments for needy citizens'. All these

activities were completely voluntary; the Nazis attacked them because

they favoured a compulsory system2, the Communists and radical

feminists because they saw Labour Service as exploiting women and girls,

particularly, and as a potential strike -breaking weapon3. But most

other parties and groups - including the Churches - supported the

Labour Service, in the hope of alleviating the misery of the unemployed4.

It was partly the failure of the democratic parties and of

the more authoritarian governments in the early 1930s to find a way

out of the crisis into which Germany had sunk that provided the

opportunity for Hitler to form a government at the end of January 1933.

Thus he became responsible for solving the economic problems of

the country. But, although it seemed as if some measure of success

in this area would be essential if he was to retain power, and if he

was to be able to pursue the aggressive foreign policy which was his

basic aim, the introduction of a vigorous economic policy was not his

first priority. He was determined to consolidate his political power

1. IfZ, MA 422, frame 5- 455891, Deutscher Arbeitsdienst, "M dell im

Arbeitsdienst ", April 1932.

2. BA, Slg.Sch., 262, Reichsleitung "Rundschreiben Nr. 14a ", 5 October,

1932.

3. BA, R58/ RMdI /NsdL, 17 March, 1932, "Kampf der Arbeitsdienst-

,

pflicht", p. 20.

BA, R451V/vorl. 10, RGO Reports, October 1932, "Frauen im 'frei-

willigen' Arbeitsdienst ", p. 8.

"Zwangsarbeit für Frauen ", FiS, December 1932, p. 6.

4. Wolfgang Benz, "Vom freiwilligen Arbeitsdienst zur Arbeitsdienst-

pflicht ", V;jfZ, 1968, pp. 323, 326 -27.
 134.

first and attempt to deal with economic problems once he felt

politically secure. He was fortunate in two respects: from

January into the summer there is a general seasonal improvement in

unemployment figures; and, as was not yet fully apparent, the

depression had reached its nadir before the end of 1932, and an upturn

had begun before his Government took office. These two factors,

combined with loud and optimistic propaganda, gave the impression that

Hitler's Government was at last bringing recovery to Germany, when all

it had done was to continue the piecemeal work-creation projects of

the previous administrations. But at last on 1 June, 1933, the

"Law for the Reduction of Unemployment" was passed; this included

measures which seemed to reflect the Nazi view of the place of women in

society

It was a fundamental part of the Nazi Vieltanschauung that

the man was the guardian of and provider for the home and family; an

unemployed man, however, would be unlikely to be able to fulfil this

function. If he were married, a man might be put in the degrading

position of having his wife support him, and possibly a family in

addition, on the meagre wage she could earn; if he were single, he

could not afford to marry and have children2. Either way, severe

unemployment was a major obstacle to a healthy rate of population

growth. In addition, the increased employment of women, sometimes at

1. "Gesetz zur Verminderung der Arbeitslosigkeit ", RGB, 1933 I, 1

June, 1933, pp. 323 -27.

2. Engelbert Huber, Das ist Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart, pp. 123-

24.

Friedrich Lenz, "Arbeitslosigkeit und Rassenhygiene ", VB, 25/26

June, 1933.
 135.

the expense of men, was driving women into occupations which, in the

view of a Social Democrat like Judith Grünfeld, as well as in the

Nazi view, were unsuitable for them1. To remedy these problems,

women would have to be taken out of heavy industry, to protect them

physiologically - or, as the Nazis preferred to say, "biologically"

- since they were the actual or potential mothers of the nation2.

For this reason, young girls were a source of particular concern,

as they had been to doctors and factory social workers for some

years3. The Nazis promoted the desirability of farm work and domestic

service for girls because they hoped to provide cheap labour in areas

which were now unpopular with women; but it was as high a consideration

that this kind of work would be much less damaging to adolescent

girls than work in a tobacco or chemicals factory.

The Nazis' intention was not, as was often claimed4, to remove

women completely from the labour market. They did aim to persuade

married women to leave work, to devote their full attention to their

family, or to start a family if they were childless or add to it if

they had followed the post-war pattern of a one or two -child family.

This would, they believed, create a situation in which single women

could be found work in occupations suited to the female physique and

the feminine nature. The number of these women, was, however,

1. Judith Grünfeld, op. cit., pp. 913 -21.

2. "Nachprüfung der industriellen Frauenarbeit ", VB, 7 February, 1934.

3. See above p. 116.

4. See e.g. Hilda Browning, Women under Fascism and Communism, London,
1935, pp. 8 -9. "Women under Hitler's Yoke ", The
M. Lode,
Communist International, November 1938, pp. 42 -43. This article
was kindly pointed out to me by Professor V. G. Kiernan.
 136.

expected to be greatly reduced by the fact that the job security

afforded to men by the withdrawal of married women from work would

enable and encourage more single men to marry'. But the Nazis did

not oppose the employment of women root and branch; in fact, they

firmly believed that women had an essential role to play in social

work of every kind, particularly nursing, primary teaching and welfare

services2. In addition, Hitler had recognised that women would continue

to be the comrades of men in the factory and the office, so that it

is clear that the Nazis did not aim to eliminate women from those

white- collar and even manual jobs which caused no harm to the female

frame. When there were enough jobs to go round, there would no

longer be the unseemly rivalry for positions which had characterised

the post -war period, and which disturbed the harmony of the nation3.

It was this situation which the law of 1 June, 1933, set out to

achieve. It provided, in the first place, considerable sums of money

to be spent on public works, and, in addition, introduced some rather

dubious expedients, including work-sharing and the use of manpower

for work previously done by machines4. Then there were two provisions

1. WuS, 1935, no. 13, special supplement "Beschäftigung, Arbeitszeit

und Arbeitseinkommen ", p. 8, "Die Anteil der Frauenarbeit in der
Industrie".

2. Paula Siber, Die Frauenfrage und ihre Lesung durch den National-
sozialismus, Berlin, 1933, pp. 26 -27.

3. Huber, op. cit., p. 123.

4. RGB, op. cit., p. 323.

See also Mason, op. cit., pp. 141, 148 -49, for a discussion of these
expedients.
 137.

which specifically affected women: in the first place, a tax

concession was announced for those who employed a female domestic

servant1. This dealt with a genuine problem, since in the

contracted economy there had been severe unemployment among domestic

servants2. But there had also been a voluntary exodus of women from

this kind of work since the war, in favour of jobs which were less

restricting and better paid3, and it was to try to reverse this trend,

since domestic work was deemed particularly suitable for women by the

Nazis, that the measure was partly geared. Above all, perhaps, work

done by maidservants was not, on the whole, work that a man would

expect, or would be expected, to do, and so domestic service could

próvide jobs for women without taking them away from men.

The other section of the law which had special relevance to

women was headed "Promotion of marriages ", and dealt chiefly with

the marriage -loan scheme4. From the employment point of view, the

important feature was that it was a condition of receiving a loan

that the bride -to -be had held paid employment for at least six months

out of the two years preceding the passage of the law - that is, in

the depths of the crisis - and that she now undertake to relinquish

her job on marriage; in addition, she was not to resume employment

1. RGB, op. cit., p. 326.

2. BA, Nachlass Gothein, Georg Gothein, "Streifleichter der Arbeits-

losigkeit", Deutsche Wirtschafts- Zeitung, 15 October, 1931, p. 987.

3. Otto Michalke, "Die Frauenarbeit ", Jahrblcher fair Nationalökonomie

und Statistik, 1935, P. 437.

4. For the population aspects of the marriage -loan scheme, see

chapter 2, pp. 51 -56.
 138.

until the loan was repaid, unless her husband's income fell below a

certain low level. In recognition of the essential part played in

family concerns, particularly in agriculture, by wives as "assisting

family members ", this category of employment was not counted as

falling within the provisions of the law1; this meant, however, that

families living on the land and depending on the labour of the wife

would not benefit from the marriage -loan scheme, which was hardly in

line with the Nazis' obsession with encouraging the growth of a

healthy "peasant" class. But it was consistent with the Nazi view that

agriculture, like domestic service, was a particularly suitable area

of employment for women.

The scope of the scheme was soon extended, to include those

who had married in the year before the publication of the law, if

the wife had been working for at least six months and was now prepared

to retire. In addition, the period during which the wife had worked

was now to fall between 1 June, 1928, and the date of the marriage,

thus bringing in the entire period of the depression, and much of the

recession before it2. Thus it was clear that the encouraging of

married women to give up work was a major priority in this law, of

perhaps less long-term significance than the population aims behind

the marriage -loan scheme, but certainly of pressing importance in

mid -1933. The general idea behind the scheme was not a new one; the

giving of an attractive lump sum as severance payment to married

women to give up work, particularly in the public service, had been

1. RGB, op. cit., pp. 326-27.

2. "Zweite Durchflihrungsverordnung liber die Gewahrung von Ehestands -

darlehen", RGB, 1933 I, 26 July, 1933, P. 540.
 139.

suggested in the early 1920s, and such a sum had been prescribed in

the law passed by the Bruning Government in 1932 to permit the

dismissal of married women civil servants under certain conditions'.

The marriage -loan scheme, however, had a much wider application, and

was intended to serve several purposes at once - increasing the number

of marriages, raising the birth rate, freeing jobs for men, giving

orders to factories producing the household goods on which the loan

had to be spent - and gave the impression of being an incentive

rather than a bribe.

Minor modifications were made to the marriage -loan laws during

the remainder of 1933 and in 1934. It was, for example, stipulated

that the Minister of Finance should be able in exceptional cases to

authorise the granting of a loan even if the applicant had not

complied with all the provisions of the original act; this provided

the loop -hole which the Nazis so often allowed themselves in seemingly

categorical regulations. At the same time, the loan scheme was made

applicable in the case of "assisting family members ", where the wife

who gave up work was replaced by someone to whom a full wage was paid2.

This was sensible from the points of view of both employment and

population policy, but it was unlikely that many people would be

1. BA, R2/1291, letter from the Württemberg Minister of Finance to

the Reich Minister of Finance, 31 March, 1923; letter from the
Verein Deutscher Evangelischer Lehrerinnen to the Reich Minister of
Finance, 7 June, 1923.

"Gesetz über die Rechtsstellung der weiblichen Beamten ", RGB,

1932 I, 30 May, 1932, pp. 245 -46. This is dealt with in detail
in chapter 5.

2. "Dritte Durchführungsverordnung über die Gewahrung von Ehestands -

darlehen", RGB, 1933 I, 22 August, 1933, p. 596.
 140.

affected, since it would almost always be more expensive to hire

paid labour in place of a wife who did not receive a wage as such.

But this measure was included no doubt merely to make it possible for

the rural population, particularly, to be brought into the scheme

somehow, and to find even a few positions for unemployed persons. It

was not, however, stipulated that these persons must be male, so that

there was the possibility of an unemployed woman benefiting from the

withdrawal of a wife from work. The situation clearly was still

desperate in winter 1933 -34, with another amendment stating that a

husband had to be indigent, not merely poorly paid, before a wife

in a loan -aided marriage was entitled to take a jobl.

Explaining the marriage -loan scheme, the Völkischer Beobachter

was completely open about the fact that "in the campaign against

unemployment one of the most important tasks of our economic policy

is to send women back to the home from the work -place ", adding the

qualification "wherever that is suitable ". The paper went on to

report what it saw as the shining example of the Reemtsma cigarette

company which was supporting the purpose of the marriage -loan scheme

by replacing the women who retired by men, and, in addition, was

making the scheme even more attractive by giving every female employee

who entered it a substantial cash payment. By November 1933 one hundred

and twenty-two women workers had already benefited from this offer by

giving up work to marry, and these had carried their celebrations to the

incredible length of having a huge combined wedding ceremony: The

Völkischer Beobachter found this entire episode thoroughly admirable,

1. "Gesetz zur Ánderung des Gesetzes über die Förderung der Ehe-
schliessungen", RGB, 1934 I, 28 March, 1934, p. 253.
 141.

and expressed the expectation that other employers would emulate

Reemtsma before long1. This was precisely the kind of "spontaneous"

activity which the Nazis encouraged, so that an objective which they

saw as important could be achieved by money contributed privately,

thus saving the Government expense. At any rate, it seems that by

the end of 1934 some 360,000 women had given up work as a result of

receiving a loan2, and if this was a reasonably pleasing outcome for

the Government, it cannot be doubted that many women were glad to be

able to give up their job, in return for official approval and

financial benefit.

The marriage -loan scheme could not, of course, bring about the

elimination of all, or even most, married women from employment,

since only those who had married since June 1932 were eligible for

it. To deal with the remainder, it must have been eagerly anticipated

by some, just as it was feared by others, that the Nazi -led Government

would take the earliest opportunity to legislate against the

Doppelverdiener, the Party having been active in the campaign against

her before 1933. But the only measure passed in this area was the law

of 30 June, 1933, which extended the Bruning law of 30 May, 1932, and

thus allowed for the dismissal of married women from the civil service

1. "Die Frau in den Haushalt, der Mann an die Arbeitsstätte ", V13, 1
November, 1933.

2. In the last four months of 1933, when the loan scheme was operative,
141,559 loans were made; in 1934 the figure was 224,619. Only
very few of these can have been made without the wife's having to
leave work. Figures from St.J., 1936, p. 42.
 142.

on a larger scale1.

Nevertheless, the general attitude of the Government to the

Doppelverdiener was hostile, and this encouraged some employers and

authorities to demonstrate their loyalty to the new regime by

dismissing married women. The Government, however, soon discovered

that these local initiatives were having undesirable effects; in the

first place, they were causing considerable unrest among employees

in the concerns affected, and, in addition, the result was by no

means always in the interests of the families they were supposed to

benefit. To try to clarify the position, the Minister of Employment

issued instructions in November 1933 which explained that the

campaign against the working married woman had so far shown that a

lack of discrimination could be detrimental to productivity since

"it is actually often the best and most industrious people who try,

by bringing a second income into a home, and by extra effort, to

provide a higher standard of living for themselves or a better education

for their children ". Preventing those who were eager to work hard

for certain objectives from doing so turned out, it was admitted, in

many cases to be counter -productive, and so in future careful

consideration would have to be given to each individual case2.

Paced with the chance to take real action against the

1. "Gesetz zur Anderung von Vorschriften auf dem Gebiet des allgemeinen
Beamten -, des Besoldungs- und des Versorgungsrechts ", RGB, 1933 I,
30 June, 1933, pp. 434 -35. This will be discussed in detail in
chapter 5.

2. Report in AfB, March 1934, pp. 125 -26.

See also Mason, op. cit., pp. 146 and 146A.

 143.

Doppelverdiener, action which the last governments before Hitler's

had been unwilling, but probably also impotent, to take, the Nazis

discovered that what the apologists of the working married woman had

maintained was true, namely that an intensive campaign against the

employment of married women would not solve Germany's economic problems,

and also that most of the married women who worked did so out of

necessity. The term Duooelverdiener, which had been so widely used

in the years 1930 -33, almost exclusively in a pejorative sense, is

still to be found in use in 1934, but to a rapidly decreasing extent;

after 1934, it was used only to describe something which had existed

in the past. The Government might maintain that this was because the

problem had been eliminated by decisive action; the reality was that

the Government discovered that this problem was very largely a red

herring.

Although it had taken little direct action to remove women

from the productive process, by 1935 the Government seemed, at first

sight, to have achieved its aim of discriminating in favour of men.

An official publication confidently asserted that,

"since the assumption of power, women's employment has once

again been reduced. The decisive factor in this has been
above all the fundamental nature of National Socialist
population policy".

In new appointments, continued the article, men had been given

preference, while the Employment Exchanges had been particularly at

pains to find work for family men, and then to help single men, to

give them the chance to marry and start a family1.

Other tactics included the banning of women from certain

categories of heavy work, for example in any kind of work underground,

1. WuS, loc. cit.

 144.
in mining, salt -works, and coking plants1, in rolling-mills

or foundries2. If these were not areas in which women might be

expected to be found, it was the employment of women for the first

time in such concerns in the 1920s which had caused concern to

Social Democrats3, for example, and which was justified only by the

extremists of the Open Door International. In other industries, for

example in brick -works, shoe -making, and certain areas of the glass

industry, the introduction of equal pay for women was intended to

discourage employers from taking on women, when men were actually

better suited to the work4. But equal pay for women was not an end

in itself, and it was introduced in only a small minority of cases

where it was felt that women had been used as labour only because

they could be paid at a lower rate than men.

The result of these measures indeed appeared to be a reduction

in the employment of women. Official figures showed that whereas

in the first three months of 1933 women's proportion in the industrial

labour force had been around 30%, there had been a decline to 25.5%

for the last four months of 1934. But this was not a true reflection

of the overall situation: it had to be admitted - albeit with a

singular lack of emphasis - that in absolute terms the number of women

in industry had actually risen by 300,000 in the same period, to a

1. "Arbeitszeitordnung", RGB, 1934 I, 26 July, 1934, pp. 807 -12.

2. "Verordnung über den Schutz der jugendlichen Arbeiter und der

Arbeiterinnen im Steinkohlenbergbau, in Walz- und Hammerwerken
und in der Glasindustrie ", RGB, 1935 I, 12 March, 1935, p. 387.

3. Judith Grünfeld, op. cit., p. 921.

4. "The Law and Women's Work ", ILO Studies and Reports, Series I, no.
4, P. 402.
 145.
total of 1.4 million1. Thus, far from achieving its stated aim of

cutting drastically the size of the female labour force, the Nazi

Government had not been able, apparently, to prevent there being a

net rise in it. The reason behind this is obvious: the real remedy

for the massive unemployment of the early 1930s was the creation of

more jobs, not the provision of work for some people at the expense

of others, nor widespread work -sharing, the expedients to which the

Nazis turned at the start.

Men had perhaps found job opportunities less available because

of female competition, but the crucial factor in the depression was

that it was the traditional strongholds of men's employment which had

been most catastrophically hit by the crisis. To achieve a genuine

improvement in men's employment prospects, these areas, in the

production goods industries, had to be revived; and this process was

also a vital part of Nazi aims in foreign policy, which would require

not only a return to pre -depression capacity in heavy industry, but

a considerable expansion of it beyond that. Thus, the decisive factor

affecting women's proportion in the labour force was not the few

measures designed to encourage them to leave work, to make way for men,

but rather the entire direction of the Government's work- creation

programme, whose purpose was to raise production in the capital goods

1. NuS, loc. cit.

By remarking that the effect of the Nazis' various measures was a

"drastic reduction in the percentage of women employed", without
noting the rise in absolute terms of the number of women employed,
and without taking into consideration the way in which men had fared
worse in the depression than women, Mason (op. cit., p. 144) appears
to miss the point at issue.
 146.

industries; this would have the effect of creating new jobs for men,

and would therefore not work to the disadvantage of women.

Women would continue to be employed in those consumer goods

industries where they had traditionally had a substantial representation,

although the restricting of domestic demand would prevent expansion of

these on a scale comparable with the expansion urgently planned for

the capital goods industries. But it is obvious that the return of

men to employment would lead to a lowering of women's share in

industry as a whole, restoring the balance which had been so distorted

in women's favour by the unnatural circumstances of the depression.

And yet, in the first two years of Nazi rule, women's unemployment

was reduced at a rate similar to that of men's, so that by the end of

May 1935 93% of available women employees had jobs, the comparable

figure for men being 88%. It was estimated that, just as the progress

made since the 1870s had depended on the participation of women in

industry, so any further expansion of the economy would not be

possible unless the remaining reserve of female labour was tapped,

for industry and business as well as for agriculture and domestic

service

C. The Organisation and Welfare of the Woman Worker in the Third Reich

Official recognition was given to the vital role of women in

the economy in July 1934, when a Women's Section was established

within the German Labour Front. In keeping with the Party's

favoured policy of the personal union of leadership functions within

a given areal, Ley appointed Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the National

1. Michalke, op. cit., pp. 439 -42.

2. Friedrich Lampe, Die Amtstrauer der Partei, Stuttgart and Berlin,

1941, pp. 107 -11.
 147.

Women's Leader in the Party, as head of this sectionl. The

Government thus acknowledged that the millions of women in

employment of various kinds were there to stay, and that, therefore,

adequate attention would have to be paid to their special needs - in

the national interest at least as much as for their own sake.

Moreover, the creation of the Women's Section of the Labour Front

was entirely in keeping with Nazi theory that the sexes had separate

needs and separate functions, and should therefore be segregated for

most purposes. That a similar process of creating separate sections

for women in each of the professional associations was taking place

at about this time2 suggests that acceptance of women in employment

at all levels was reached at about the same time, and also that the

consolidation of Nazi power was sufficiently advanced to permit the

regime to embark on its long-term social policies by the summer of

1934.

The Women's Section of the Labour Front was not intended to be

a women's organisation: the NS- Frauenschaft and the Deutsches

Frauenwerk served that purpose, and it was made clear that no

challenge to their monopoly position would be tolerated3. The Section

was rather a department of the Labour Front, without members of its

own, but responsible for the welfare - and indoctrination - of women

1. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, "Einrichtung eines Frauenamtes in der DAF ",

order by Robert Ley, 12 July, 1934.

2. Details of this are given in chapter 5.

3. For a fuller discussion of this, see chapter 6.

 148.

who were members of the Labour Front1. Thus, the Section was to

forge the closest possible ties with the Frauenschaft, so that the

same relationship existed between the two as existed between the

Labour Front and the NSDAP. While working women were therefore to

belong to an organisation which was under male leadership and the

majority of whose members were men, they were to be constantly reminded

that they were women first and employees second. Frau Scholtz -Klink

believed that this policy could be effective only if the officials

of the Women's Section were members of the Frauenschaft, and if the

Frauenschaft had a share in the appointment of these officials. In

addition, it seemed imperative that co- operation at the national

level be complemented by a close relationship in Gau, Kreis and

Ortsgruppe2. On the other hand, as Frau Scholtz-Klink's chief

'spokeswoman on Labour Front affairs, Alice Rilke, pointed out, women

should be represented in the full Labour Front organisation whenever

matters concerning women were under discussion, again at the national

and local levels, and women representatives were to visit factories

and offices to see for themselves the conditions in which women worked3.

The Women's Section of the Labour Front required a large staff,

if it was to fulfil its responsibilities to the seven million women -

all employed women apart from "assisting family members" - who came

1. Alice Rilke, "Frauenerwerbst ,tigkeit im neuen Deutschland ", FK,

January1937, p. 12.

2. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, "Frauenamt der DAF und NS- Frauenschaft ", order
by Gertrud Scholtz- Klink, no. 9/35, 17 August, 1935.

3. Alice Rilke, op. cit., p. 11.

 149.
within its jurisdiction1. By 1938 it had indeed built up a formidable

network, with 291 women - fifty -two of them full -time - in the Gau

offices, 643 in the Kreis offices, and 9,073 in Ortsgruppe units.

These were the administrators; in addition, there were 47,870 women

representatives of the Section throughout the individual factories

and businesses, and 1,000 factory social workers, including 200

trainees; together, these last two figures constituted a four -fold

increase over the pre -1933 figures2. Thus employment was provided for

a number of women in an area approved by the Government, and a degree

of control and surveillance was maintained over the female work -force.

The factory social workers were expected to fulfil a wide

variety of functions: they acted in an advisory capacity to the

management and the Council of Trustees in the matter of the general

welfare of employees; they were counsellors in disputes between

individual workers and for those who had personal problems; and they

were also to be consulted about the employment or dismissal of

female employees. In particular, they had the task of supervising

the maintenance of a high standard of hygiene in factories. To

familiarise them with the position of working women, factory social

workers were required to spend a period working on the shop-floor;

this was in addition to their having obtained a qualification in

social work, having performed Labour Service, and having attended a

training camp run by the Women's Section. There was one further

1. BA, op. cit., "Die Aufgaben des Frauenamtes der DAF ", Der
Führerorden, 15 November, 1935.

2. Ibid., "Reichsfrauenführung Jahresbericht 1938 ", p. VIII.

 150.

requirement: "Naturally ", stressed the official literature on the

subject, "for such vital work a commitment to National Socialism...is

essential ". Any possibility of organised unrest among women workers

was eliminated by the device of appointing this "politically reliable"

factory social worker - who was subordinate to the Women's Section and

instructed to co- operate with management - to the post of shop

steward, in which capacity she was supposed to act as sole representative

of the female work -force in any dealings with the management, the

Trustees of Labour, and the Women's Section of the Labour Front

In addition to this vital function, as the Nazis saw it, of

creating harmony between capital and labour - or, more accurately,

a docile labour force - under the direction of the State, the Women's

Section had four main tasks to fulfil. Frau Scholtz -Klink

characterised these as social welfare for employed women, protection

of their child -bearing capacity at work, the evolving of more

comprehensive labour legislation, and the provision of courses in

practical housekeeping for women and girls who had worked since

leaving school, to give them basic knowledge of and experience in the

running of a home2. This last task was seen as particularly important

since the Nazis claimed that proficiency in domestic duties had been

undervalued in the post -war period, with the result that women were

finding themselves with a home to run and little idea of how to do it.

As was often the case with their claims and boasts, there was a grain

of truth in this. Accordingly, working women were encouraged to take

1. Ibid., Der Führerorden, loc. cit.

2. "Vier Jahre Einsatz für die schaffende deutsche Frau in Fabrik

und Büro", VB, 14 May, 1937.
 151.

part in the courses in domestic science and child -care devised by the

Frauenwerk. Although the fees for the course were waived for women

who paid membership dues to the Labour Front, the women nevertheless

had to attend the courses in their free time; it is therefore perhaps

surprising that by 1937 as many as 600,000 working women were

estimated to have attended a course'.- Although this figure represented

rather less than 10S of working women, it seems reasonably

successful, given that there was no real incentive and no coercion,

but only a barrage of propaganda in favour of attendance at the

courses.

The three other major tasks of the Women's Section were

broadly concerned with the health and welfare of the working woman.

There was collaboration with the NSV to ensure that pregnant women

were given adequate care at work and that a woman's financial position

was secure around the time of her confinement. Naturally, the

interests of individual women were here purely incidental to the top

priority of ensuring that working women would bear healthy children.

This preoccupation was also at the root of other measures which

undoubtedly brought benefit to individuals; for example, women were

encouraged to avail themselves of the recreational facilities of

the Labour Front's "Strength through Joy" section2. Some women were

afforded extra paid holidays because students, in vacation, and

Frauenschaft members who were not themselves employed volunteered for

1. BA, loc. cit.,

2. BA, loc. cit.

"Frauencongress am Nürnberg: Frau Scholtz -Klink über die Frau im

Beruf ", FZ, 15 September, 1935.

Alice Rilke,loe. cit.

 152.

unpaid factory work for this purpose. In fact, between March 1935

and the end of 1938 6001 women were replaced by 5063 volunteers, who

provided 86,072 extra days of paid leave1. These rather unimpressive

figures - less than 1% of working women benefited here - suggest

that for once the Nazis were using the term "voluntary" correctly.

Nevertheless, the venture was seen as a useful propaganda weapon,

which was said to illustrate the new community spirit that had

developed in Germany since 1933, after the deep divisions of the 1920s;

and it had the additional virtue of costing the Government nothing.

The Women's Section of the Labour Front claimed to be

tackling the vexed problem of removing women from unsuitable,

damaging work. Indeed, its representatives sent in reports about

conditions at work, and would sometimes propose measures to remedy

shortcomings. But this tended to reflect local problems which were

difficult to cope with in a rational way by a strictly centralised

organisation. There was, for example, a suggestion from a district

welfare officer in Lahr, on the Rhine, that needy pregnant women

workers in the local cigar factory should be given a supplement

to help them to refrain from work until their child was six months

old, for the sake of both mother and child2.

But the Government preferred to concentrate on working out

broad measures which would have a beneficial effect throughout the

country, and it produced a fairly creditable list of laws to deal

with some of the worst problems. As early as July 1934 a law

1. BA, op. cit., "Reichsfrauenführung Jahresbericht 1938 ", p. VIII.

2. BA, R2/18554, letter from Marie Stoess to the Ministry of Finance,

27 September, 1935.
 153.

restricting the number of hours women might work, specifying the

amount of overtime they might do under special circumstances, and

completely banning night work for women in medium-sized and large

concerns after 10 p.m., was passed'. 'omen were banned from the

most arduous kinds of work in a variety of industries, laws being

passed in 1937, for example, restricting their employment in

pottery and confectionery manufacture to light work which would not

impose an unhealthy strain on them. And plans were afoot to try

to ensure that women did not do potentially damaging work in home

industry2. Farther piecemeal legislation was enacted throughout the

1930s3, but it was all regarded as an interim solution only, until

the Government could achieve its aim of drawing up a comprehensive

Maternity Protection Law4. This was finally done in war-time, when

the need to bring as many women as possible into industry was already

vitiating the effectiveness of existing legislations. The Maternity

1. "Arbeitszeitordnung", RGB, 1934 I, 26 July, 1934, pp. 807 -12.

2. BA, R22/2073, Generalakten des Justizministeriums, "Neue

Sozialgesetze in Vorbereitung", 3 June, 1937.

3. For example, "Ausftihrungsverordnung zur Arbeitszeitordnung",

RGB, 1938 I, 12 December, 1938, pp. 1800 -01.
"Glashtittenverordnung ", RGB, 1938 I, 23 December, 1938, pp. 1961-
65.
"The Law and Women's Work ", ILO Studies and Reports, Series I, no.
4, pp. 294 -96, lists a number of measures.

4. BA, op. cit., letter from Weyer at the Ministry of Finance to the
Reich Ministers etc., 17 November, 1938.

5. "The Employment of Women Workers during the War ", ILR, 1939, vol.
40, p. 802.

Provision had been made in advance for the suspension of labour

protection measures for women in the event of war, IfZ, MA 468,
frame 5723, "Arbeitseinsatz im Kriege", 2 February, 1937.
 154.

Protection Law, which came into force on 1 July, 1942, in a modified

form to meet the exigencies of war, was designed to protect not only

pregnant women and nursing mothers, but all working women; the

Government intended to amend and extend it substantially after the

1
war .

How much real influence the Women's Section of the Labour

Front had is hard to judge. It would probably be fair to say that its

effectiveness lay in the control it could exert over the female

work -force, chiefly in the negative sense of preventing industrial

unrest. Its influence in policy -making was, however, negligible.

Indeed women benefited from protective legislation and from

improved hygiene and welfare at work, but this happened because it

was an integral part of the Government's population policy, not

because of the success of pressure from representatives of the

Women's Section. Their ineffectiveness is illustrated by their

failure to achieve a narrowing of wage differentials between the

sexes2, although from 1935 they claimed to be campaigning for equal

pay for equal work3. Such equalisation of wages as there was came

1. BA, op. cit., "Entwurf: Gesetz zum Schutze der arbeitenden

Mutter (Mutterschutzgesetz) ", 1940 (exact date not given). A
second draft was produced on 23 February, 1941, and the law
finally passed on 17 May, 1942.

Martha Moers, Der Fraueneinsatz in der Industrie, Berlin, 1943,

P. 144.

2. Bry, op. cit., pp. 100 -01, 247, shows that throughout the Nazi
period wage differentials remained very much what they had been
in the Weimar period. For these, see above, p. 123.

"Indexziffern der Arbeitsverdienste", NuS, 1940, no. 18, p. 433,

and St.J., 1941/42, p. 390, give illustrative figures.

3. "Das Frauenamt der DAF", Deutsches Frauenschaffen, 1938, p. 50.

 155.

about precisely to remove women from unsuitable employment l. With

its desire to limit wage rises as far as possible, and with, in

addition, the lower priority accorded to the consumer goods sector,

in which women chiefly figured, the Government had no intention of

restructuring wagest. It would, after all, be an expensive business,

since not even a Nazi Government would have tried to lower men's

wages to achieve equal pay, particularly in time of full employment,

in the later 1930s. The only alternative was to raise women's wages,

and the Government would not contemplate that.

D. Attem.ts to Attract Female Labour before the Second World War

When Hitler's Government actively began to prepare for the

eventuality of war in the foreseeable future, in 1935 -36, there

was a rapid transition from a programme of job creation to attempts

to tap every possible source of labour, for it quickly became clear

that the most pressing problem would be a shortage of labour where

there had so recently been mass unemployment. Therefore the

reintroduction of conscription and the stepping up of rearmament

openly and on a massive scale from March 1935 were supplemented by

the National Service Law of May 1935. This provided that in time of

war there should be the conscription into war industry and essential

services of all men aged between fifteen and sixty -five who were not

called up for military service, and of all women in the same age -

group who neither had children under fifteen to look after nor were

pregnant. This was intended to be the legal basis for making every

1. See above, p. 1.44.

2. "Die Frauenlohn im Kriege ", F/, 20 March, 1940.

 156.

effort to ensure that armaments and food supplies were produced on

a large enough scale once vast numbers of men had been transferred

from their civilian occupations into the armed forces1.

The Government was well aware, however, that the provisions of

the National Service Law would by no means solve all the problems

caused by massive conscription into the armed forces. In a report

made in February 1937, a senior civil servant named Nolte drew

attention to the fact that in the Great War all belligerent countries

had experienced a drop in productivity, Germany's being of the order

of 20. This, he contended, was primarily because men who were

accustomed to certain jobs had had to be replaced by people -

often women - who were totally unfamiliar with them, and often quite

unsuited to them. With women only marginally represented during the

1930s in those industries vital to the waging of a war, Nolte predicted

that Germany would experience similar difficulties in a future

war, unless action was taken at once. Investigations were already

under way, he said, to ascertain which industries would provide

real employment possibilities for women once men had been withdrawn;

this would be facilitated by the temporary lifting of restrictions

on the employment of women in heavy industry, in cases where it seemed

to be in the national interest. But Nolte also sounded a note of

caution, pointing out that, as in the Great War, it would no doubt

1. IfZ, op. cit., frame 5719, "Arbeitseinsatz im Kriege ", 2 February,

1937.
 157.

emerge that many of the women available for work had little

experience of employment, and would be unlikely to make a really

valuable contribution to a war -effort'. It was largely with this

problem in mind that the Government was to try its utmost,

particularly from 1938, to persuade as many women as possible to

enter employment, and particularly to find jobs in areas which had

hitherto been exclusively or predominantly male preserves.

One useful indicator of the employment situation was the attitude

of the Government to the granting of marriage loans. The condition

that the wife or fiancee must give up her job to be eligible for

a loan had been applied strictly in time of high unemployment; but

what would happen to this condition - claimed to be partly

ideological - when the problem was one of full employment? Sure

enough, the first slackening of the rule came in summer 1936, shortly

before the formulation of the Four Year Plan: at the end of July

the Finance Minister was empowered to allow the wife in a loan -

aided marriage in exceptional cases to take a job even if her husband

was not indigent2. Six months later, Reinhardt signed an order to

the effect that the wives of men who were performing Labour Service

or military service, or who were still studying, should count as

exceptions automatically under the previous ruling3.

This move was welcomed gleefully by the editors of Die frau,

1. IfZ, op. cit., frames 5719 -23.

2. "Sechste Durchführungsverordnung fiber die Gewährung von Ehe -

standsdarlehen", RGB, 1936 I, 28 July, 1936, p. 576.

3. "Wiederbeschäftigung von Empfängerinnen von Ehestandsdarlehen ",

RAB, 1937 I, no. 4, 19 January, 1937, p. 24.
 158.

who insisted on seeing it purely in terms of a restoration of women's

freedom to work, in certain cases, regardless of their marriage

loan1. Reinhardt's purpose was far more pragmatic: in March

1936 it had been ruled that the wives of men in the Labour Service

or the armed forces were eligible for an allowance if they were

unable to support themselves2; clearly, an anomaly existed whereby

women in loan -aided marriages might be unable to support themselves

because of a legal restriction, and not necessarily because of their

family commitments. The Government might, then, be in the curious

position of paying some women twice for not working, even if

they were able and willing and, in 1936, at a time when there were

job vacancies for them; Reinhardt's order thus saved the Government

money on the one hand and provided labour on the other.

But the real change came in November 1937, in a law made

retroactive to 1 October, 1937, which amended all previous enactments

on the subject of marriage loans. It reaffirmed the proviso that the

future wife must have held a job for at least nine months out of

the two years preceding the application for the loan. But no mention

was made of the need for the wife to give up her job to be eligible

for a loan3. The result was that it now became a condition of

receiving a loan that the woman had worked for a substantial period

1. "Frauenarbeit trotz Ehestandsdarlehen ", Die Frau, May 1937, p. 463.

2. "Familienunterstützungsgesetz ", RGB, 1936 I, 30 Mlarch, 1936,

p. 327.

3. "Drittes Gesetz zur Anderung des Gesetzes fiber die Förderung der
Eheschliessungen", RGB, 1937 I, 3 November, 1937, pp. 1158 -59.
 159.

since autumn 1935, when the unemployment problem was practically

solved. This was a neat way of completely reversing the purpose of

the marriage -loan scheme at a time when labour was becoming scarce,

for those seeking a loan would now have to ensure that the woman

took up employment for nine months if she was not already working.

The scheme had apparently served its initial purpose well enough;

by the end of 1937 878,016 loans had been made', so that at least

three -quarters of a million women must have given up work. But it

cannot be doubted that a substantial number of these women would

have married and given up work - to start a family - even if there

had not been a marriage -loan scheme, so that its real effect is

difficult to gauge.

Even with the shortage of labour becoming a source of anxiety

by the end of 1937, the Government was determined, so the

V8lkischer Beobachter reported, not to permit young girls of fourteen

or fifteen to go straight from school into a factory, for biological

reasons2. Here, it seemed, the Nazis were not prepared to sacrifice

a vital principle to growing necessity. There was, however, an

ulterior motive. The municipal authorities in Hanover had already,

in spring 1936, stipulated that in future girls would have to wait

for a year after leaving school before they would be admitted to an

apprenticeship in the area; further, preference was to be given at

the end of that year to those girls who had in the interim engaged

1. Calculated from figures in St.J.: 1936, p. 42; 1937, P. 44;

1938, p. 48.

2. "Mädel am Arbeitsplatz ", VB, 25 December, 1937.

 160.

in work within the broad category of domestic science'. Now, in

December 1937, the Labour Front followed this example, advising

young girls throughout the country to spend a year between school

and first employment in work of a domestic nature, to safeguard

their physical development at the crucial age of puberty, and to

ensure that they had some experience of the tasks they would

encounter when they married2.

This still did not tell the whole story. The chief consideration

was that the severe unemployment which there had been among domestic

servants during the depression had now given way to a shortage which

might be at least partly offset by encouraging young girls - the

cheapest labour on the market - to spend a year in domestic service;

if this became automatic, there would be a constant supply of labour

in this area, even if the turnover was rather rapid. The problem

had already been highlighted by Reinhardt's partially repealing one

of his original measures designed to combat employment; the tax

relief granted in June 1933 to those who employed a domestic

servant was to be restricted to families with young children, who,

for reasons of -population policy, would continue to receive the

rebate. But there was now no reason to provide incentives for single

people or childless couples to employ a domestic servant3. The other

area which was losing labour in an alarming manner was agriculture;

1. "Lehrstellen für Madchen erst ein Jahr nach Schulentlassung ",

FZ, 6 May, 1936.

2. VB, loe. cit.

3. "Beschränkung der Steuerermässigun g für Hausangestellte ", FZ,

9 October, 1937.

4. Mason, op. cit., discusses this; see particularly pp. 651 -54.
 161.

this, like the loss to domestic service, was merely a continuation

of a trend already strongly evident in the 1920s, but interrupted

by the depressions. Already in May 1937 it had been announced that

the employment exchange in the Magdeburg area would maintain a

strict control in future to stem the flow of women from work on the

land, where they were urgently needed, into serving in the town's cafes2.

In industry, at any rate, women's representation was already

increasing in the later 1930s, on a voluntary basis: while their

share had dropped - although their absolute numbers had at the same

time increased - from 29.3% of the industrial labour force in 1933

to 24.7 in 1936, by June 1939, at a time of full male employment,

it had again risen to 27.0%. In absolute terms, whereas in both

the 1925 and 1933 censuses there had been shown to be almost 11.5

million women in employment altogether, in mid-May 1939 the figure

was 12.7 million; this meant that 37% of the German labour force

was female even before the outbreak of war3. Thus, the available

reserve of women had been partially used up before men were

conscripted into the armed forces in large numbers4, at a time when

the total number of women of working age was falling because of the

trend in the birth rate earlier in the century.

1. Michalke, op. cit., P. 437. See above, p. 137.

2. "Weibliche Arbeitskräfte vom Lande (Magdeburg) ", FZ, 22 May, 1937.

3. Figures from St.J.: 1933, P. 19; 1939/40, p. 386. And from

Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1959,
P. 9.

4. Dietmar Petzina, "Die Mobilisierung deutscher Arbeitskräfte vor

und während des Zweiten Weltkrieges ", VjhZ, 1970, p. 449, comments
on this.
 162.

The increase in women's employment in 1939 was largely

occasioned by the appearance of women in work in which they had, on

the whole, not formerly been found, since the areas which had

traditionally had a high proportion of women employees now had a

low priority. In particular, women were being drawn into the

transport services, whether as clerkesses or ticket -collectors in

the railways administration or as conductresses on trams1. And in

June 1939 it was reported that in Bremen, among other cities, women

were now being employed to deliver the post2. Somewhat sanctimoniously,

the V8lkischer Beobachter remarked in July 1939 on its pleasure at

each manifestation of a changing attitude in those branches of

employment where women had hitherto had to struggle against prejudice

- prejudice, the paper failed to add, which it had formerly done its

utmost to foster. The change in attitude, continued the homily,

was for the first time apparent in banking and insurance, where it

was now realised that women could be employed in order to release

men to enter occupations which only they could do; the implication

was that this meant chiefly active service3.

If it was relatively easy to justify the admission of women to

work which they had not been accustomed to perform, and to explain

the positive enthusiasm now officially accorded to employed women,

given the obvious shortage of labour, the encouragement now being

1. "Die Reichsbahn stellt die Frau ein ", FZ, 7 April, 1939.

Reports in FZ, 18 June, 1939 and 2 July, 1939.

2. Report in FZ, 18 June, 1939.

3. "Einsatzmöglichkeiten für die Frau ", VB, 19 July, 1939.

 163.

given to married women to take a job was a more sensitive matter.

Der Angriff, however, characteristically adopted a direct approach,

posing the question in January 1938: "Why are married women working?"

Its answer was equally frank, with the explanation that the chief

factor of economic significance was the glaring shortage of labour,

so that the old campaign against the Doppelverdiener was no longer

of any relevance1. The steep drop in the birth rate from the war

years up to the IOachtübernahme, explained Dr. Walter Stothfang, a

high official in the Ministry of Employment, meant that there would

soon be a severe drop in the number of workers available, so that

women, both married and single, would have to be brought into

employment in larger numbers than ever before2.

The Völkischer Beobachter went even further, in October 1938,

pointing out that the increase in women's employment had been so

steep since 1936, and especially during 1938, that the only reserve

of labour left, for further expansion of the economy, was among

those married women who were not already employed. The nation now

needed the service of middle -class wives, who might have a grown -up

family or be childless, and whose day was not fully occupied,

especially if they employed a domestic servant. Women would have to

take an increasing share in industrial work, but, the paper was quick

to add, this would be accompanied by increasing labour and maternity

protection measures on grounds of population policy3.

1. "Von uns notiert...: 'arum arbeitet die verheiratete Frau ?"

Der Angriff, 26 January, 1938.

2. Walter Stothfang, "Verstärkung der Frauenarbeit ", Der Angriff,

26 August, 1938.

3. "Die Frauenarbeit in der Gesamtwirtschaft ", VB, 22 October, 1938.

 164.

Alice Rilke, of the Uomen's Section of the Labour Front,

was not, however, prepared to be quite so glib. She felt it a matter

of deep concern that married women, and especially mothers, were being

drawn into industrial work in ever -increasing numbers, and could

see justification for it in the short term only, as a matter of

urgent national necessity. It was not that she opposed the employment

of women; rather, she believed that the long-term needs of the

nation, namely the health of the next generation, necessitated a

sensible division of labour between men and women, so that the

"hundreds of thousands of women" still involved in work that was too

heavy for their physical strength could change places with the

equally large number of men who did relatively light work1. But

this solution was rather too facile also, particularly when it was

envisaged that in the event of war women would not merely augment the

labour of men but in large measure have to replace it altogether.

So great was the desire to attract married women into work

that, in spite of the misgivings of many employers, half-day

shift -work was recommended by the Government, for those women who

were reluctant to commit themselves to full -time employment when they

also had a family to look after. The first reports, in the spring of

1939, on this experiment were generally favourable. The benefit felt

by the women themselves was stressed: now they had the strength for

their two tasks, at home and at work, now those who had changed from

full -time to part -time employment were no longer permanently harassed,

1. BA, NSD30/1836, Informationsdienst..., August 1939, Alice Rilke,

"Die Frauenberufs- und Erwerbstatigkeit in der Betrachtung des
medizinisch -bevölkerungspolitischen Schrifttums ", p. 190 (first
published in January 1939).
 165.

claimed Dr. Ilse Buresch -Riebe in her report. In addition, she

said, there was higher productivity among women working a five -

hour day than among those who were reduced to exhaustion by the

eight -hour day1.

Seeing enormous possibilities in the half -day system, the

sinister of Employment ordered investigations in the summer of

1939 to try to find out how far it could be extended throughout the

various branches of the economy2. The clothing industry in the

neighbourhood of Manchen- Gladbach and Rheydt was one area in which

it was claimed, in August 1939, that the experiment of a four-and-

a-half hour day had proved a happy one3. It was not only in wage-

earning occupations that married women were now found to be in

demand; the authorities hoped to persuade married women with

secretarial or clerical experience to return to work on at least a

part -time basis, and were particularly anxious that those with

training in welfare or social work would similarly respond4.

Piecemeal local restrictions and official exhortations were

not, however, a satisfactory way of ensuring that the labour

required for the fulfilment of the Four Year Plan of September 1936

was made available. There would therefore have to be a concerted

1. BA, op. cit., Ilse Buresch-Riebe, "Erfahrungen bei der Beschäft-

igung von Frauen in Halbtagsschicht ", p. 190, (first published
in April 1939).

2. "Die Halbtagsarbeit für verheiratete Frauen ", FZ, 9 July, 1939.

3. "Die Beschäftigung verheirateter Frauen", FZ, 4 August, 1939.

4. Report in Die Frau, June 1939, p. 499.

 166.

effort to mobilise every possible reserve of labour, either by

persuading those who had chosen not to work to change their mind, or

by imposing a degree of compulsion. It was perhaps characteristic

of the Nazis that their policy should turn out to be something

between these two possibilities - a mixture of considerable persuasion,

limited coercion, and eventually also threats of rigorous compulsion.

The genuine reluctance of a dictatorial regime to try to force its

subjects to bow to its will was based on apprehension, even fear,

and not respect; but the result was still the failure to achieve its

aim of an adequate supply of labour, even in the early years of the

Second World War, while women stayed at home, unwilling to work.

E. Nazi Schemes of Compulsory Service for Girls

One measure of compulsion which had been promised was that

"all young Germans of both sexes" would be required to perform six

months' Labour Service1. Brüning's emergency measure had been

nationalised in 1933, but its function was intended to be more

ideological and educational than economic, although in the first

instance it proved useful for alleviating both the unemployment

situation and the overcrowding of the universities2. While the Labour

1. "Reichsarbeitsdienstgesetz ", RGB, 1935 I, 26 June, 1935, pp.

769 -71. Unfortunately, limitations of space do not permit the
more detailed discussion of the Labour Service which the
availability of material makes possible.

2. Benz, op. cit., pp. 333 -37; c.f. the propagandist picture in
Freising, op. cit., pp. 42 -43. More will be said about the last
point in. Chapter 4.
 167.

Service became compulsory for men from October 1935, however,

the Women's Labour Service continued as a separate and still

voluntary exercise, with some 12,000 girls at a time working in

domestic service or agriculture1. Although administrative changes

were made, and target numbers raised repeatedly - to 25,000 in

1937 -38, to 30,000 by April 1939 and to 50,000 a year later -

the Women's Labour Service remained a much smaller concern than the

men's2, and was not made compulsory until 4 September, 19393, when

the outbreak of war meant that the girls would now have to replace

the men rather than provide additional labour. Hierl, the Labour

Service leader, had already made it clear, in a statement which

Frick supported, that the purpose of the Labour Service for girls

was above all to provide a pool of auxiliary workers for agriculture4.

1. BA, Slg.Sch., 262, Karl Pollmann, "Die Reichsanstalt für Arbeits-

vermittlung und Arbeitslosenversicherung und der Deutsche Frauen-
arbeitsdienst", Deutscher Arbeitsdienst, Sonderausgabe: "Der
Deutsche Frauenarbeitsdienst ", ? summer 1935, p. 3.

2. "7. Verordnung zur Durchführung und Erganzung des Reichsarbeits-

dienstgesetzes (Arbeitsdienst für die weibliche Jugend) ", RGB,
1936 I, 15 August, 1936, p. 633.

"Erlass des Führers und Reichskanzlers über die Dauer der Dienst-
zeit des Reichsarbeitsdienstes und die Starke des Reichsarbeits-
dienstes für die weibliche Jugend ", RGB, 1936 I, 26 September,
1936, p. 747.

"Erlass des Führers und Reichskanzlers über die Sommer- und

Winterstärke des Reichsarbeitsdienstes und über die Starke des
Arbeitsdienstes für die weibliche Jugend ", RGB, 1937 I, 24
November, 1937, p. 1298.

"Erlass des Führers und Reichskanzlers über die Starke des Arbeits-
dienstes für die weibliche Jugend", RGB, 1938 I, 7 September,
1938, p. 1157.

3. "Verordnung über die Durchführung der Reichsarbeitsdienstpflicht

für die weibliche Jugend", RGB, 1939 I, 4 September, 1939, p. 1693.

4. "Arbeitsdienstpflicht der weibliche Jugend und Hilfe in der

Landwirtschaft ", VB, 2 July, 1936.
 168.

Thus, well before the outbreak of war the primacy of the "educational"

function of the Labour Service was overridden by the desperate need

to find labour for agriculture, at a time when the aim was autarchy1.

The drawback about the Labour Service, as far as the Government

was concerned, was that it cost money; girls, like boys, lived a

communal life in a camp and wore a uniform, the funds for their

subsistence and clothing coming from the Ministry of Finance. Krosigk

was less than enthusiastic about the expansion of the Labour Service

for this reason2. Göring, however, as Plenipotentiary for the

Four Year Plan, devised a less expensive tactic which could be applied

to a wider group than the 25,000 girls involved in Labour Service

at any one time in 1937 -383. On 15 February, 1938, he announced

that the Government reserved the right to require all unmarried girls

under twenty -five to work for a year in domestic service or

agriculture before they would be allowed to enter employment, because

of the severe shortage of labour in these areas4. There was no attempt

1. On the limitations on autarchy, see Berenice A. Carroll, Design

for Total War, The Hague, 1968, p. 103. Chapter VII of this
book is devoted to a discussion of the Four Year Plan.

See also Dieter Petzina, Autarkiebolitik im Dritten Reich, Stuttgart,

1968, pp. 197 -98.

2. RGB, loc. cit.

BA, R2/4525, letter from Krosigk to Frick, 14 October, 1938.

3. Schoenbaum, op. cit., pp. 192 -93, completely confuses the Labour
Service for girls with the introduction of this new " Pflichtjahr"
(year of compulsory service) for girls. Mason, op. cit., p. 616,
n.2, appears to do the same.

4. "Anordnung zur Durchftihrung des Vierjahresplans über den verstärkten

Einsatz von weiblichen Arbeitskra.ften in der Land- und Hauswirtschaft ",
15 February, 1938, Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, no. 43, 21 February,
1938.
 169.

to disguise the fact that this was a measure intended purely to

fulfil the economic aims of State policy, although Dr. Timm,

describing it in the Ministry of Employment's gazette, insisted

that it had a deeper significance in that it directed girls into

work which was particularly suitable for them in view of their

future role as the wives and mothers of Germans1.

The Minister responsible for the Employment Exchanges made

immediate use of G8ring's enabling order: on 16 February he

announced that it would apply to those girls who first came onto

the labour market after 28 February, 1938; those who had already

worked were not.to be included. In addition, in the first instance

the order was to apply only to girls who wanted to work in the

textile, clothing or tobacco industries, or in an office, the

occupations in which women had traditionally been best represented;

in the case of the industries mentioned, there was deliberate

discrimination because these were the least important to the Nazi

scheme of things. But the applicability of the order was very

restricted at this time, particularly given the proviso that girls

would be exempt who had performed Labour Service or some other form

of agricultural or domestic work for at least a year; this was extended

to include work which did not classify as full employment for the

purposes of the labour book, performed in the family or with relatives

1. Max Timm, "Das Pflichtjahr far Madchen ", RAB, 1938 II, no. 7,
5 March, 1938, p. 75. I am most grateful to Dr. T. ;1. Mason for
generously sending me a copy of this article.
 170.

of the girl, provided that there were four or more young children

and that the girl was genuinely helping to look after them1. No

doubt this provided a welcome loop -hole for some who dreaded being sent

to work in a strange household.

In order to try to ensure that there was the minimum of

evasion of these new provisions, it was also announced that all school -

leavers were to present themselves at their local employment exchange

within two weeks of leaving school. Failure to comply would

result in the imposition of a substantial fine on the legal guardian

of a young person who defaulted2. It had been estimated that some

140,000 girls, or 30;'0 of those due to leave school in March 1938,

had affirmed that they had no desire to take a job or learn a trade,

and would probably stay at home, at least at first3. No doubt the

prospect of having to do the year of service before employment had

confirmed this intention in many. But now all these girls had the

duty to register at the employment exchange, so that they would either

have to provide badly- needed labour in areas of paid employment where

there was a shortage, or resign themselves to a year's work in

agriculture or domestic service before taking a job in a less vital

area of employment.

The results were, however, disappointing, with most girls

1. "Durchführungsanordnung zur Anordnung fiber den verstärkten Einsatz

von weiblichen Arbeitskräften in der Land- und Hauswirtschaft ", 16
February, 1938, Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, op. cit.

2. "Anordnung über die Meldung Schulentlassener ", 1 March, 1938,

Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, no. 51, 2 March, 1938.

3. "Warum immer neue Forderungen an die Mädel ?" VB, 10 March, 1938.
 171.

clearly opting for paid employment of a kind which exempted them

from the obligation to perform the year of service, so that at the

end of 1938 a new order replaced the original one; this stipulated

that all girls who aimed to enter manual or white- collar occupations

of any kind would be obliged to engage in the compulsory year, if

they had not already performed a year of service voluntarily. There

was, however, a lengthy list of exempted occupations, including

auxiliary nursing, welfare work and work with small children, as

well as a provision that exceptions might also be made at the

discretion of employment exchange officialsl. These loop -holes were,

however, closed in summer 1939, when it was laid down that all girls

under twenty-five were to engage in a year's service in domestic

work or on the land, whether they aimed to take a job or not?.

Even so, only 188,695 girls were certified to have performed

their compulsory year in 1939 -40, although the figure for those

starting on their year in 1940 was more promising, at 335,9723. The

permitting of a number of exempted categories4 continued to ensure that

the institution of the compulsory year was much less effective than

its outward paraphernalia of orders and propaganda suggested.

1. "Durchführungsverordnung zur Anordnung fiber den verstärkten Einsatz

von weiblichen Arbeitskräften in der Land- und Hauswirtschaft"
23 December, 1938, Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, no. 305, 31 December,
1938.

2. "Weibliches Pflichtjahr für alle ", Westdeutscher Beobachter, 12

June, 1939.

3. Figures from St.J., 1941/42, P. 420.

4. E.g., "Anrechnung hauswirtschaftlicher Ausbildungen in staatlich

anerkannten Lehranstalten auf das Pflichtjahr für Madchen ", RAB,
1940 I, 15 March, 1940, p. 102, and "Pflichtjahr für Mädchen;
hier: Befreiung durch Besuch der Berufsfachschule für Hotel -
und Gaststättengehilfinnen in Heidelberg ", RAB, 1940 I, 25 April,
1940, p. 184.
 172.

The result was to leave Germany still with insufficient

labour in domestic service and agriculture, which testifies to

the skill and ingenuity of girls and their parents in circumventing

the new laws. There was also a conflict of interests between two

Nazi policies here: the desire to direct unmarried girls under

twenty-five into the Labour Service and into the year of service

was matched by a preoccupation with encouraging early marriage. It

is not inconceivable that the rise in the number of marriages

towards the end of 1939 was partly occasioned by some girls'

choosing to marry in haste rather than perform service of this kind.

At any rate, in summer 1939 the employment exchanges were instructed

to allow the employment of domestic servants in childless or small

families only if demand had been met in large families; this order

was apparently necessitated by the turning down of vacancies in

large families by the girls themselves because there were jobs

available which were more to their liking1. On the land, too, the

situation was so serious that Frau Scholtz -Klink appealed to girls

and women who were not employed to give up a few afternoons, a

weekend, or longer if possible, to help out at harvest timet.

In this increasingly serious situation Hitler's Government

went to war, in September 1939; it at once announced that the girls'

Labour Service was to be compulsory, and its numbers raised to

100,000; this level was to be achieved by Hierl's conscripting all

1. BA, NSD30 /vorl. 1836, Informationsdienst..., August 1939,

"Hausgehilfinnen und Kinderreiche Familien ", p. 189.

2. "Alle Kräfte werden gebraucht ", Westdeutscher Beobachter, 24 June,

1939.
 173.
single girls aged 17 to 25 who were neither in full -time education

or employment nor "assisting family members" working on the land1.

An order by Stuckart, laying down the procedure for conscripting

the first batch of girls, those born in 1920 and 1921, set the

wheels in motion2. But in general the central organisation of the

expanded girls' Labour Service seems to have been singularly

unintelligent. Discontent was perhaps at its highest in Bavaria,

where it was complained that girls already working on the land,

including some performing their year of compulsory service, were

being conscripted into the Labour Service. Even worse, girls in

the compulsory year scheme were volunteering for Labour Service in

the hope of reducing the total time they would have to spend in

service altogether3; and ordinary farm-workers were incensed when they

realised that the Labour Service girls worked a much shorter day

than they4.

As a matter of sheer inefficiency, the conscripting of girls

familiar with office work of one kind into office work of another,

to replace men called up for active service, was a source of

incredulity as well as discontents. But the loudest complaints came

1. "Verordnung über die Durchführung des Reichsarbeitsdienstpflicht

für die weibliche Jugend ", RGB, 1939 I, 4 September, 1939, p. 1693.

2. BA, Slg.Sch., 262, letter from Stuckart to Reich Ministers and

the Reichsstatthalter, 27 September, 1939.

3. Ibid., letters from the Bavarian Minister of the Interior to the

Bavarian NSDAP Gau leadership, and from the Bavarian office of
the Reichsnahrstand to the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, both
dated 30 October, 1939.

4. IfZ, MA 441/6, frames 2- 757123 -26, MadR, 13 July, 1942.

5. IfZ, MA 441/5, frame 2- 755206, MadR, 10 November, 1941.

 174.

from rural areas, where the situation was such by 1941 that

serious doubts were being raised about the value of continuing to

use the Labour Service for work on the land1. Altogether, it is

clear that attempts to use compulsion to make girls work in areas

designated by the Government were uniformly unsuccessful; this

was partly because of the failure to implement conscription

rigorously, but it was also the result of the division of control

among different agencies - GBring's office, the Ministry of

Employment, the Labour Service - which led to duplication and

contradiction instead of to co- ordination of the war- effort.

F. The Failure of Attempts to Win Women for the afar Effort, 1939 -41

The lesson which the Government chose to learn from the

experience of the Great War was in some respects similar to that

pinpointed by Nolte in 1937, namely that women would have to be

brought into jobs normally done by men to release them for active

service. Further, it was realised that "voluntary service is not

enough "2. Accordingly, in summer 1938 a law was passed specifying

the categories of persons liable for labour conscription, on the

basis already provided by the National Service Law of May 1935. It

affirmed that both men and women were to be brought into industries

necessary for the waging of war and the maintaining of essential

services. There was to be exemption for those women who had children

under fifteen to look after, or-who were more than six months pregnant3.

1. Ibid., frames 2- 755478 -79, MadR, 15 December, 1941.

2. "Die Frau in der Landesverteidigung", VB, 7 March, 1939.

3. "Gesetz ilber Leistungen für Wehrzwecke", RGB, 1938 I, 13 July,

1938, pp. 888 -89.
 175.

Although this enabling legislation had immediate application to

large numbers of men, it was not yet applied to women, Advance

warning was, however, given that women would be required to

perform service not only in the Red Cross and in welfare activities,

but actually in the armaments industry itself, in the event of wart.

The creation of even a partial war economy - a Blitzkrieg

economy, as Milward calls it2 - in the autumn of 1939 necessitated the

rapid transfer of women into jobs vacated by men on their

conscription into the armed forces, as had long been anticipated.

This was facilitated by a contraction in the consumer goods industries

in which women were chiefly employed3, so that those women who found

themselves without a job were at once transferred to the now vacant

places in what had been regarded as "typical men's occupations", in

the vital war industries. It was believed that a short training

course would be sufficient to enable women who were already

accustomed to the routine of factory work to change from, for

example, employment in a textile factory to work in a munitions

factory4. In addition, it was felt that the change should be

1. VB, loc. cit.

2. Alan Milward, The German Economy at War, London, 1965, pp. 7 -10,
explains this term.

3. Mason, op. cit., pp. 601 -02, states that for reasons of popularity
it was not possible for the Nazis to restrict home consumption,
even in war -time, the result being that still by early 1940 no
consumer goods factories had been closed. Nevertheless, the
impression is that capacity was run down from September 1939; the
reports of Himmler's agents cited in this section seem to bear
this out.

4. "Der Fraueneinsatz in der Kriegswirtschaft ", NS- Frauenwarte, May

1940, inside of front cover and p. 417.
 176.

attractive for those women who now, for the first time, were given

the chance to undertake skilled and specialised work and, therefore,

to earn a higher wage than formerly1. The impression given was that

the entire nation was acting in unison, and that the redeployment of

labour into vital industries was going smoothly. As the Frauenschaft's

magazine put it: "Women have taken over at once and in all areas

of employment the positions of the men who are fighting for Germany,

with a natural readiness. There exists nowhere a gap, for as soon as

a man withdraws a reliable and eager woman moves into his job "2.

It was only to be expected that in time of war articles

relating to the vital subject of labour supply should be presented in

a confident and optimistic manner. But it was soon apparent to the

Government that the situation was in fact far from satisfactory. As

Nolte had realised, women brought into unfamiliar work could not

adequately replace men who had been used to it; as early as October

1939, Himmler's agents were reporting that "especially in

armaments factories productivity has declined considerably, most

of all among the women "3. But unfamiliarity with the work was not

the only reason for this; discontent at conditions of work soon

became a major source of concern. As had been provided in the

National Service Law, there had been in September 1939 the suspension

of at least some of the restrictions which had formerly protected

women from having to work long and unsocial hours, so that in munitions

factories they were in some cases being required to work for between

1. Walter Stothfang, Der Arbeitseinsatz im Kriege, Berlin, 1940,

pp. 23 -25.

2. "Frauenhände packen zu ", NS-Frauenwarte, October 1939, p. 210.

3. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750111, BziL, 20 October, 1939.

 177.

10i and 13 hours per day, whether on day-shift or night -shift.

This had dramatic results in a Kiel factory, where it was established

that a series of explosions which had occurred in October 1939 had

been due not to sabotage attempts - as had at first been suspected -

but to the exhaustion and consequent inefficiency of the women workers.

Only in a few places were eight -hour shifts now in force,

and women workers showed their discontent with the long hours they

were expected to work by reporting sick or taking days off when

their applications for holidays were refused, because the managers

of vital war industries were not permitted to grant them1. The main

complaints made by the women were that they did not have enough time

to clean the house, wash clothes, go shopping or visit relatives,

and that even an eight -hour day was oppressive since many of them had

to spend time travelling a long distance to work in addition. Mothers

with children of school age found looking after them difficult enough.;

those with infants were faced with the problem that there were very

few créches.

The medical profession voiced concern at the detrimental

effect long shifts on a long-term basis might have on women's health

and, especially, on their reproductive capacity, and suggestions

were made that five -hour shifts should be introduced, carrying the

earlier experiments with half-day working into war industry. Such a

scheme would be beneficial from several points of view: it would

protect women from overwork; it would give them time to attend to

their domestic duties; and, it was hoped, it would encourage more

women to volunteer for work, since the long hours had so far been a

1. Ibid., frames 2- 750094 -95, BziL, 16 October, 1939.

 178.

considerable disincentive to potential workers1. But the very

fact that relatively few women were prepared to volunteer for work

meant that those who were working had to continue to work long hours,

and this led to mounting discontent which resulted early in 1940

in a decline in the number of women working2.

This was precisely the opposite of what the Government had

hoped to achieve, but in many respects it had only itself to blame.

In spite of its own enabling legislation, it had failed even to try

to implement conscription of female labour once the war had started.

Thus, it had fallen back on propaganda to try to achieve its aim

by attracting volunteers. But not only were hours and conditions of

work sufficiently disadvantageous to discourage potential volunteers;

wages, too, were thoroughly unattractive, so much so that those

women who were working complained continually about them. Some

women even felt moved to ask what had happened to the money firms

saved by employing them instead of the men they had formerly had to

pay at a significantly higher rate; others were simply aggrieved

because they had been transferred from their peace -time jobs to

war industry where they earned substantially less, because they were

unfamiliar and therefore slow with the work, and remuneration was on

a piece -work basis3. Managers of firms, as well as women workers,

demanded a reform of the wage structure on the basis of equal pay for

equal work, regardless of sex4, but the Government publicly announced

1. Ibid., frames 2- 750490 -91, MadR, 18 December, 1939.

2. BA, R18/3282, letter from Stuckart to Suren, 15 February, 1940.

IfZ, op. cit., frames 2- 750862 -63, MadR, 19 February, 1940.

3. Ibid., frames 2- 750440 -41, MadR, it December 1939.

4. Ibid., frame 2- 750865, MadR, 19 February, 1940.

 179.
that it had no intention of undertaking fundamental reforms of this

nature in war- timel, although the need to attract women workers was

becoming vital.

Even under these most unsatisfactory conditions it might have

been expected that many married women would have had no choice but

to work, for purely financial reasons; husbands were now at the front,

no longer providing for their families. The Government had itself,

however, provided the solution for many women; in a law introduced

in March 1936, and extended in July 1939, it had been decreed that

an allowance would be provided for the families of men serving

their country in the armed forces. In fact, it had been made

abundantly clear in 1939 that each person entitled to this allowance

was nevertheless required to work for a living unless youth, old age,

ill health or taxing family commitments made this undesirable. The

provisions applying specifically to women clearly allowed for the

exemption from this obligation of those who had the running of a

household or the care of relatives to cope with, as well as of those

whose employment would "endanger the stable upbringing of children "2.

The intention here had been to avoid a situation where those

who were, for one reason or another, unfit for work, and who had not

had to work in peace -time, found that the source of their support had

been removed and were now obliged, perhaps in distressing circumstances,

1. "Die Frauenlohn im Kriege ", EZ, 20 March, 1940.

2. " Paanilienunterstiltzungsgesetz ", RGB, 1936 I, 30 March, 1936, p. 327.

"Verordnung zur Ergänzung und Durchführung des Familienunterstüt-

zungsgesetzes", RGB, 1939 I, 11 July, 1939, pp. 1225 -32.
 180.

to go out to work in order to survive. This was a laudable enough

purpose. But the actual result was that, as employment exchanges

reported in February 1940, a great number of married women who had

previously been employed had given up work now that they were

receiving -their allowance as wives of enlisted ment. This, as

Stuckart pointed out, was the case even with women who had worked

before the wax, out of necessity; now, their allowance obviated this

need. The Ministry of Employment was most anxious to find ways of

arresting the resulting decline in the number of employed women2, and

a meeting was arranged to discuss the matter on 22 February, 19403.

Meanwhile, reports of a continuing drop in the number of

employed women were still corning in, as more men were called up and

more wives therefore became eligible for the allowance; in addition,

working women who married serving soldiers also fell into this

category. The main reason for the rising number of retirements was

that a substantial part of a woman's earnings was counted against her

allowance, and an amount accordingly deducted from the allowance4.

Thus, in addition to the other, considerable disadvantages attaching

to employment, there was a positive financial disincentive to deter

those eligible to receive the allowance from going out to work.

The failure to attract women into employment, and particularly

into the war industries, led to demands for coercion and even compulsion.

1. BA, R18/3282, letter from Beisiegel, at the Ministry of Employment,

to Frick, 15 February, 1940.

2. Ibid., letter from Stuckart to Suren, 15 February, 1940.

3. Ibid., letter from Beisiegel to Frick, 15 February, 1940.

4. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750864, riadR, 19 February, 1940.

 181.

The Mayor of Berlin complained in March 1940 that even childless

wives of soldiers had given up work and were living on their

allowance, and urged that the law be changed to prevent thisl.

Seldte, as Minister of Employment, was anxious to do so, and he and

Stuckart collaborated to produce a proposal for a bill to introduce

the compulsory employment of women in the war effort. At the same

time, discussions were taking place to frame legislation to compel

women in receipt of the dependant's allowance to return to work if

they did not fall into any of the exempted categories specified in

the law of 11 July, 19392. But the Government saw legislation as a

last resort and hoped that a propaganda campaign would still produce

the desired result.

The propaganda centred around the threat of introducing

compulsion which, it was hoped, would persuade enough women that

sooner or later they would be obliged to work, and that they might as

well volunteer before they were conscripted. Not surprisingly,

however, the threat had the opposite effect: the majority of women

saw no point in volunteering at once if they were bound to be

1. BA, op. cit., letter from the Mayor of Berlin to Krug von Nidda
at the Ministry of the Interior, 26 March, 1940.

2. Ibid., "Verordnung zur Durchführung der Verordnung über den

verstärkten Einsatz von Frauen für Aufgaben der Reichsverteid-
igung", May 1940 (exact date not given).

Ibid., letter from Stuckart to the Ministerial Council for the

Defence of the Nation, 9 May, 1940.
 182.

conscripted in any case1. Even Hitler's public references to the

need to bring women into war work to back up the efforts of Germany's

soldiers in the field2 brought no response; no doubt Germany's very

success in the war in 1940 and 1941, and the triumphant propaganda

about it at home, helped to convince many that their contribution

was not needed, and that the war would soon be brought to a

victorious conclusion.

Not until 30 June, 1941, was an order issued instructing the

authorities who paid the dependant's allowance to examine each

case with a view to giving women the choice of returning to work - if

there seemed no genuine obstacle to this - or forfeiting their

allowance. By late September 1941 over 80,000 cases had been examined,

over 40% of which had been judged justifiable. According to the

National Statistical Office, only 17% of the total had so far taken

a job, but only 293 women had positively refused to do so; the

immediate reduction of their allowance had led fifty -two of them to

change their mind. There was some caution about these figures, however,

because they differed from those presented by the employment exchanges,

which showed a higher number of those who had had their allowance

1. "Der Fraueneinsatz in der Kriegswirtschaft ", NS- Frauenwarte, May

1940, p. 417.

Boberach, op. cit., no. 189, 26 May, 1941, pp. 146 -48. Boberach
expresses the view that all the talk about and plans for the
conscription of female labour, which had still, by May 1941, had
no concrete results, were purely for propaganda purposes, to
encourage volunteers (p. 147n.). The document cited suggests,
however, that this tactic had precisely the opposite effect.

2. Domarus, op. cit., quotes two major speeches in which Hitler

appealed to German women in these terms, on 16 March, 1941
(p. 1674), and on 4 May, 1941 (pp. 1707 -08).
 183.

reduced because of their refusal to work, and a lower number of

those who returned to work1.

The poor results of this measure left the issue of labour

conscription open, until at a meeting on 7 November, 1941, Gering,

the chairman, intimated that Hitler was now of the opinion that

women who had so far refused to work would be workers of little

value, and that in any case there were strong physiological grounds

for objecting to women's doing strenuous work. The intention was

therefore not any longer to try to increase women's employment

by any means, but rather to reduce it when enough prisoners of

war had been set to work2. This decision to abandon attempts to

coerce women into war industry without actually imposing conscription

came at a time when Hitler and his advisers still believed that

Russia would be defeated by Blitzkrieg tactics and the partial war

economy, although their confidence soon began to wane3.

The effects of the decision were, in fact, chiefly bad for

Germany: industry desperately needed extra labour; and the female

workers it already had were now incensed by the unfairness, as they

saw it, of their having been persuaded or even dragooned into work

while those who had steadfastly refused to work in the face of strong

pressure were now rewarded by being left alone. The circumstance of

the working woman, which had caused so much discontent from the start

1. BA, op. cit., letter from Sicha at the National Statistical Office
to Krug von Nidda, 27 September, 1941.

2. Ibid., letter from Jacobi to Suren (both at the Ministry of the

Interior), 17 November, 1941.

The number of prisoners of war working in Germany was 294,393 in

February 1940; by December 1940 it had risen to 1,178,668.
Figures from St.J., 194142, P. 424. POWs could clearly provide
a substantial reserve of labour.

3. Milward, op. cit., p. 45.

Carroll, op. cit., pp. 229 -30.

 184.

of the war, had not been improved, and women with large families

as well as a job were grossly overburdened while childless wives and

single girls, who were making no contribution to the war-effort,

could, for example, shop for scarce commodities at leisure1. There

was also the social divisiveness - at a time when national unity

was the aim - of the fact that middle -class women and girls had

been slow to volunteer in the first place, and had been ready with

reasons or plausible excuses for resisting propaganda and pressure

directed at persuading them to work2. Stuckart, for one, had argued

that conscription would have the benefit of being seen by the

population as a whole to apply to those who had so far chosen to be

unproductive in time of national emergency, regardless of their

station in life3. His voice went unheeded; whether the reasons

Hitler gave in November 1941 were the real ones for abandoning the

idea of compulsion, or whether the Government was anxious not to lose

face if a conscription order was widely evaded4, the result was that

Germany was desperately short of labour for war industry, and that this

was a major reason for her ultimate defeat.

At first sight, Nazi policy towards the employment of women

1. IfZ, MA 441/6, frames 7412 -14, MadR, 17 August, 1942.

2. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750862, MadR, 19 February, 1940.

Boberach, op. cit., p. 148.

3. BA, op. cit., letter from Stuckart to the Ministerial Council

for the Defence of the Nation, 9 May, 1940.

4. It may be argued that the Nazis were wary of antagonising the

middle class, or even that it was in the nature of fascism to
discriminate in favour of it. These questions are too involved,
and not sufficiently relevant, to merit discussion here.
 185.

appears to have experienced an ideological volte -face, with the

crude, early demands for the return of women to the home being

replaced by almost equally crude demands that women seek work to

release men for the armed forces. But it is reasonably clear that

the ultimate aim of Nazi policy towards women was to create a situation

in which women could indeed return to the home once the German

nation had achieved its "rightful" place in the world. While Michalke

had dismissed as unrealistic those who hoped to eliminate female

employment altogether, he warned that there might in the future recur

a situation where jobs were scarce, so that there might well have to

be restrictions on the employment of women who were not entirely

dependent on their own income1. A writer in the Westdeutscher

Beobachter also counselled moderation in 1935, proposing that those

women who had been forced to work in the desperate situation of

"Marxist- Centrist post -war Germany" should not be summarily thrown

out of work. At the same time, however, he made it clear that a

reduction in the number of women in employment was a definite long-

term aim2. Even during the war, when the Government was still trying

to break down the strong resistance on the part of many women towards

going out to work, the debate about whether women should, in principle,

be employed continued. While it was seen as a bitter necessity that

almost 12 million women should be working in 1940, the long-term

ideal was the creation of a situation where the German woman could be

a full-time housewife3.

1. Michalke, op. cit., pp. 443 -44.

2. Leo Schäfer, "Grenzen der Arbeitsschlacht? Und die Frauen ?"

Westdeutscher Beobachter, 30 June, 1935.

3. Wiener Library Dossier, "Frauenarbeit ", FZ, 9 June, 1940.

 186.

This was indeed a departure from the liberal view that each

individual should be given the chance to find his or her metier in the

way and at the pace he or she chose. But it was entirely consistent

with the Nazi view that the interests of the State must have top

priority. In war -time particularly, however, it quickly became

clear that there was some disagreement and even confusion in the top

echelons of the Government and the Party as to what precisely were the

interests of the State. Whereas in Britain there was no doubt that

the top priority was the defeat of Nazi Germany, and that the

compulsory direction of women between 18 and 50 into at least part-

time work was essential for the war effort', in Germany it was hoped

by many, and even believed by some, that such an expedient would not

be necessary.

The result was an absence of positive direction from the

centre, so that local Labour Front representatives were to be found

making "official" utterances which were often not only different from

each other but even positively contradictory2. This vagueness was,

as Mason rightly says3, the product of reluctance to antagonise the

population by introducing unpopular policies. Perhaps even more

fundamentally, it resulted from the division of opinion between the

ideologues, who were determined to implement Party theory, even when

it was totally impractical, and the mene- like Seldte and Stuckart -

who had to make the system work. In the case of trying to compel

1. Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Women's Two Roles, London, 1968,
pp. 51 -53, gives a brief account of this.

2. IfZ, MA 441,/6, frames 7414 -16, MadR, 17 August, 1942.

3. Mason, op. cit., p. 605.

 187.

women into war work, this combination of fear of popular discontent

and ideological stubbornness led to the abandoning, until 1943, of

attempts to force women to provide the labour Germany vitally

needed. The arbitrary decision of the Führer, a man whose views

were increasingly removed from reality, was sufficient to ensure that

the long-term Nazi obsession with protecting women "biologically"

took precedence over the essential immediate aim of concentrating all

available resources on the task of ensuring the survival of the Third

Reich.
 188.

CHAPTER FOUR

Higher Education and Senior Schooling for Girls

Introduction

As a result of the progress made in opening the universities

to women before the Great War and providing senior schooling to

prepare women for higher education, the 1920s saw an improvement

in educational and professional opportunities for women'. By the

end of the decade, however, Germany was in the throes of economic

disaster, and retrenchment in Government expenditure wherever possible

had become necessary. Education, as a major State enterprise, was

immediately affected. The results of this had direct and indirect

effects on opportunities for women beyond the level of compulsory

schooling, up to the age of 14; but it is important to realise that

men, too, were affected, often in a similar way. This was true even

under the Nazi Government, although Hitler had already made his

Party's views on women's education clear: "future motherhood is to

be the definite aim of female education "2. This suggested that the

Nazis would aim to free women from what they regarded as the masculine

elements of education, the intellectual ones, to which they were not

suited3. On this basis, it has been generally assumed - often wrongly -

that in the Third Reich girls were denied an academic education at

1. On the limitations to progress in achieving professional positions

for women, see Michael Kater, "Krisis des Frauenstudiums in der
Weimarer Republik ", Vierteljahrschrift ftlr Sozial - und Wirtschafts-
geschichte, 1972, pp. 217 -18.

2. Hitler, op. cit., pp. 459 -60.

3. F. Hiller, "Mädchenerziehung", F. Hiller (ed.), Deutsche Erziehung

im neuen Staat, Langensalza, 1934, p. 350.
 189.

school and severely discriminated against in universities and

colleges'. It is therefore the aim of this chapter to show that

many of the early educational policies attributed to the Nazi

Government were prefigured in measures of the last Weimar Governments,

measures dictated by economic necessity, and that the policies

actually initiated by the Nazi Government were similarly moulded by

necessity, with the result that dogma and ideology had, with changing

circumstances in the 1930s, to be set aside on a number of occasions.

In addition, it will be shown that reactionary and philistine

attitudes were by no means the prerogative of the NSDAP alone, but

that there was, even among the better educated, the feeling that,

far from too little progress having been achieved in making higher

education available to a wider range of people, there had been too

much change, particularly in the field of education for women.

A. The Depression and Opposition to Higher Education for Girls; in

pa:rticularL the Nazi View

The chief problem in higher education in 1930 was that there

were far too many students in universities and colleges for many of

them to have a chance of finding a professional or managerial position

1. Examples of this are to be found in:

Otto B. Roegele, "Student im Dritten Reich ", Otto B. Roegele (ed.)
Die Deutsche Universität im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1966, pp. 161-
62.

Rolf Eilers, Die nationalsozialistische Schulpolitik, Cologne

and Opladen, 1963, pp. 18 -21.

Karl Bracher, "Die Ideologische Gleichschaltung", K. D. Bracher,

W. Sauer, G. Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung
Cologne and Opladen, 1960, p. 322.

Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, London,

1971, pp. 260 -61, 285 -86.
 190.

at the end of their studies, in the shrunken market of the depression

years. This was at the very time when women's representation in

the universities was stronger than it had ever been: in the summer

semester of 1931, 19,394 girls constituted 18.7% of the record total

of 103,912 students, and in the following semester women even

increased their share to 18.9%, the strongest point of their

representation before the Second World iVarl. This trend received a

not unmixed reception: many people remained unconvinced of either

the necessity or the desirability of admitting women to academic

study2. A former Baden Minister of Education, Professor Willy

Hellpach, conceded that a small number of women should continue to

attend universities, but asserted that only a tiny fraction of them

would give value for the money spent on them, since the majority would

marry without even starting a career. While he deplored the

stultifying education which had formerly been all that was available

to girls in the nineteenth century, he nevertheless described the

female nature as "always more intuitive and irrational. Therefore,"

he added, "academic schooling in languages and mathematics should

be restricted to factual matter "3.

Others were less moderate: male students, particularly,

claimed that not only were academic standards falling because of the

presence of girls in universities in ever -increasing numbers, but, in

addition, that the long- standing tradition of "student comradeship"

1. Calculated from figures in St.J., 1932, pp. 426 -27.

2. For detailed examples of this, see Michael Kater, op. cit., pp. 219-
29.

3. Willy Hellpach, Die Wesensgestalt der deutschen Schule, Leipzig,

1926, pp. 151 -53.
 191.

was being destroyed. Replying to comments of this kind, a writer

in Die Frau im Staat asserted that women were clearly performing a

real service if they were destroying the exclusive, beer -swilling

male corporations. She also claimed that there was an element in

the male student body which was trying to disguise its own inadequacies

by launching an all -out attack on women with the aim of driving them

out of the universities1. Certainly, the reaction against the

overcrowding of the universities, aimed at students in ;eneral, and

not at girls in particular, caused alarm among the men, to the extent

that one male students' magazine suggested that girls should be

denied full rights of matriculation, and should confine themselves

to "their characteristic occupations "2. It was abundantly clear that

this meant running a home and bearing children.

The first restriction imposed in higher education did in fact

affect girls specifically. In 1929, the Prussian authorities

issued an order limiting the number of girls who would be admitted

to train as technical teachers, since it was becoming difficult to find

places for those already qualified. At the same time, it was

announced that the number of female students of physical education

would also be reduced3. This was not, however, deliberate

discrimination against girls, but an ad hoc measure to try to relieve

the pressure of student numbers where it was felt to be urgent, and

where it could most easily be effected. As the situation worsened,

the Prussian Government saw fit to close the physical education college

1. E. Knowles, "Ketzer_ische Gedanken fiber die Invasion der studierenden

Frau", FiS, April 1930, p. 9.

2. "Die Lage der Frau in den geistigen Berufen ", BF, July/August, 1932,
p. 2.

3. HA, reel 37, fol. 736, "Mitteilungen des Reichsfrauenausschusses

der DDP", 15 December, 1929.
 192.

at Spandau, for members of both sexes, in spite of protests from

DVP deputies in the Landtag1.

At the national level, there was widespread concern about the

creation of an "academic proletariat" of jobless graduates; Das

Deutsche Studentenwerk, the organisation through which grants were

paid to able but needy students, strongly criticised the admission of

an indiscriminate flood of young people into higher education2. In

the Government itself, there were discussions held from 1930 onwards

at the Reich Ministry of the Interior aimed at finding ways to reduce

the pressure on senior schools as well as colleges. The chief

conclusion arrived at by the experts consulted by Dr. Wirth, the

Minister, was that there would have to be a rigorous selection process

for applicants for higher education. It was suggested that the

voluntary Labour Service, created primarily for the unemployed in

July 1931, should be particularly recommended to school -leavers, since

many of them would be obliged to find jobs of a practical nature, given

the saturation of the professional market3.

There was, however, one favourable factor, which ought to have

allayed the authorities' fears to some degree, but does not appear to

have done so. This was the decline, in the years 1928 -33, in the

number of senior school pupils which was the result not of a rigorous

selection process but of the fact that those children born in the years

of the low war -time birth rate were reaching senior school age at this

1. BA, R451I/64, DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Januar -April 1932, report

of 23 January, 1932.

2. E. '7. Eschmann (ed.), Wo findet die deutsche Jugend neuen Lebensraum ?,

Berlin and Leipzig, 1932, p. v.

3. Christoph Fuhr, "Schulpolitik im Spannungsfeld zwischen Reich und

Ländern ", supplement to Das Parlament, 17 October, 1970, pp. 28 -29.
 193.

time. Numbers in girls' senior schools actually suffered a smaller

decline than those in boys' schools, since there was at this time a

higher proportion of girls aiming for senior schooling and higher

education than previously. But, even so, the girls' private schools

experienced heavy losses, with the increasing tendency for girls, like

boys, to attend the State schools, whose educational standards were

higher

Particularly noticeable was the trend towards a greater degree

of coeducation, for purely practical reasons, since small senior

classes, and even schools, for girls could be disbanded, and

expenditure on salaries and the maintenance of buildings saved. In

some states, coeducation was increased to such an extent that girls

formed a very significant proportion of pupils at schools which were

primarily intended for boys. In Thuringia, an extreme case, there

were in 1933 more girls attending boys' schools than girls' schools,

while in the ten smaller North German states 25% of all girls

receiving senior schooling were at boys' schools2. Throughout the

country as a whole, however, the proportion was smaller, with 35,600

girls at boys' schools in 1931 -32 constituting 6.7% of the total; this

was a slight increase over the 1926 -27 figures of 28,800 and 5.2%.

The general result of these figures was to increase the total number

of girls receiving senior schooling, to 283,000, so that in 1931 -32,

when the total number of senior school pupils had actually dropped -

and numbers at girls' schools, too, had dropped - the total number of

1. "Reichsschulstatistik 1931/32", St.D.R., vol. 438, 1933, pp. 6, 21,

27, 30, 35.

2. Ludwig Wülker, "Die offentliche höhere Madchenschulen der nord-

deutschen Lander im Philologenjahrbuch von 1933 ", D. Mad., April
1934, pp. 84 -86.
 194.

girls at senior schools had increased from the 1926 -27 figure of

278,000. The proportion of girls to boys in senior schools was

accordingly raised from 53.2 to 57.1 per 1001.

This development in no way signified an official decision in

favour of coeducation in principle; its merits were vigorously debated

throughout the 7eimar era, with the Social Democrats and Communists

advocating it and the Roman Catholic Church its strongest opponent.

It had been accepted as a necessary and temporary measure before the

First World -far in those areas where the only girls' senior school

was the Höhere T8chterschule, but anxiety increased among those who

opposed it in principle as the number of girls at boys' schools grew

rather than diminished in the 1920s. Even the relatively enlightened

Prussian Education Ministry admitted to being "seriously opposed to

coeducation for reasons based on developmental psychology and

educational sociology.... Coeducation, or rather coinstruction, as

a makeshift is in a different position "2. In Bavaria, the power of

the Catholic Church and the Bavarian People's Party meant that

coeducation could barely be considered a live issue, while at the

national level the Centre Party was able to block any move against

segregation of the sexes. The radical Alice Rfhle- Gerstel regretted

that the "tentative experiments" in coeducation had not succeeded in

converting its opponents during the 1920s, and observed that in village

schools, where small numbers made coeducation a necessity, boys and

girls still sat at opposite sides of the classroom3.

1. St.D.R., op. cit., p. 31.

2. I. L. Kandel and Thomas Alexander (trans.), The Reorganisation of

Education in Prussia: Based on Official Documents and Publications,
New York, 1927, pp. 102 -03.

3. Mathilde Drees, "Das Madchenbildungswesen ", Zentralinstitut fair

Erziehung und Unterricht (ed.), Die Reichsschulkonferenz in ihren
Ergebnissen, Leipzig, 1921, pp. 69 -73.

Rtihle-Gerstel, op. cit., pp. 49-50.

 195.

On the two issues that worried the conservatives and the

clericalists most, the "inflation" of student numbers in the later

1920s and early 1930s and doctrinal opposition to coeducation, the

National Socialist Party took a similar, if more militant, stand.

The Nazis had always criticised the overvaluing of purely academic

study, and their strong anti- intellectualism1 was complemented by

their insistence on the merits of more practical occupations.

Indeed, one of the demands of Point 20 of their Party Programme of

1920 was that teaching curricula be brought into line with the

requirements of day -to -day living2. mein Kampf's version was that the

first emphasis should be laid on physical training, with spiritual

nourishment taking second place and the study of academic subjects

only a poor third. In this respect, at least, girls' education was

to be governed by the same principles as boys'3. But the fundamental

Nazi dogma of the basic differences between the sexes - and therefore

the need for their "separate development" - invested the Party's

official line on the question of girls' education, at every level.

In this area, as in many others, much of Nazi thought was

based on a revulsion against the developments of the post -war years.

The Party's attitudes were neither original nor revolutionary; rather,

1. Hitler's speech at the first congress of the Labour Front, 10

May, 1933, found in Domarus, op. cit., vol. I, p. 268.

Bernhard Rust, "Das Preussische Kultusministerium seit der nat-

ionale Erhebung ", Hiller, op. cit., pp. 39 -40.

Nieuwenhuysen, op. cit., p. 44.

2. Found in Walter Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, Frankfurt am Main,

1957, p. 30.

3. Hitler, loc. cit.

 196.

they were a conglomeration and extension of the old conservative

ideas prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century, when women were

agitating for admission to the universities, still apparent after the

First World War, and by no means dead in 1930. The Nazi objection to

attempts to give girls the same kind of education as boys, on the

grounds that girls and boys were fundamentally different mentally as

well as physically, was only a restatement of a view current at the

turn of the twentieth century1. Similarly old -fashioned was the

Nazis' recurring assertion that women were subjective, whereas men

were objective, women were emotional and sentimental, whereas men

were creative and calculating; for these reasons, women were

considered basically unsuited to academic study2. The emphasis on

the formal and abstract, to the neglect of women's natural disposition

towards the actual and practical, had led, the Nazis claimed, to a

corruption of girls' education during the years of the Weimar

Republic. Even worse, all girls who valued their essential womanliness

had been regarded as exceptions, and the natural calling of woman,

that of housewife and mother, had been devalued3.

1. Arthur Kirchhoff (ed.), Die Akademische Frau, Berlin, 1897, p. xi.

James E. Russell, German Higher Schools, New York, 1907, pp. 131,
420.

2. Hans -Joachim von Schumann, Die nationalsozialistische Erziehung

im Rahmen amtlicher Bestimmungen, Langensalza, n.d. ( ?1934), pp. 39-
40.

Marie Schorn, "Frauenstudium in der Zukunft ", A. Reber -Gruber (ed.),

Weibliche Erziehung im NSLB, Leipzig and Berlin, 1934, p. 16.

3. "Die Geschlechter im Dritten Reich ", Frankische Tageszeitung, 17

April, 1934.

;iayer, op. cit., pp. 30-32.

 197.

As was generally the case, there was a grain of truth in the

picture drawn by the NSDAP; great stress had, after all, been laid on

the importance of giving girls the chance of an academic education

similar to that available to boys, although only a very small - if

increasing - minority of schoolgirls would have the desire or the

ability to benefit from it. And in spite of official recognition,

at least in Prussia, of the vital place of women "in the family, in

a vocation, or in some other place in the interests of general welfare "1,

the academic senior schools had made no provision for training in

homecraft in their time-table, with the small exception of a little

instruction in needlework in the Lyzeum2. Domestic science instruction

had been available to those who specifically were not pursuing an

academic career, but the Prauenschule3 had certainly not been regarded

as the equal of the other types of senior school. Conceding these

points does not, however, detract from the fact that the Nazis

greatly exaggerated and distorted the situation, as yet another stick

with which to beat the Republican politicians from the vantage -point

of opposition, and as a means of discrediting them once the Party

had achieved power.

In extravagant language, the Nazis attacked the "Jewish -

intellectual" concept of the highly- educated woman, and what they

called the "liberal-democratic -marxist" practice of encouraging women

1. 1Candel and Alexander, op. cit., P. 541.

2. Thomas Alexander and Beryl Parker, The New Education in the

German Republic, London, 1930, pp. 256 -57, 275 -76.

3. The Frauenschule was the name given to a stream in the girls'

senior school which gave instruction in domestic science, cooking,
child-care, hygiene, et al.. Op. cit., p. 277.
 198.
to achieve the same aims as men, when their beings were different

and complementary'. Girls had often appeared inferior because they

were being judged by the same criteria as boys, criteria which were

not relevant to the female nature2. Emphasis on practical education,

related to the needs of living, meant, therefore, that girls'

education must differ from boys', to correspond with the different

roles they were intended by nature to play. The result was that even

in subjects studied by both sexes, girls' education would be slanted

differently from boys'. For this reason, coeducation could have no

place in Nazi policy, since it allowed the development of neither a

real man nor a true woman3.

In the Third Reich, the new course in girls' education was to

be one in which a transformation of purpose would take place both in

school and after it. While training for the future wives and mothers

of Germans should be provided, the need, it was felt, was less for

mechanical instruction in the arts of housekeeping and child -care -

although these subjects would definitely have their place - than for

education to an awareness of the girls' responsibility for the stability

of society and to the future generation of Germans4. Individualism,

1. Hitler's speech to the Frauenschaft at the Nuremberg Congress of

1934, found in Domarus, op. cit., p. 451.

Rudolf Hess, "Die Aufgaben der deutschen Frau ", VB, 27 May, 1936.

2. Schumann, loc. cit.

Hiller, op. cit., p. 350.

3. Schumann, loc. cit.

Johannes Büttner, (ed.), Der :leg zum Nationalsozialistischen Reich,

Berlin, 1943, p. 858.

4. Hiller, op. cit., p. 351.

 199.

which she Nazis saw as the scourge of Germany in the 1920s, was

to be completely discouraged, and service - in the family, in the

community, at work, even in public life - was to be the main theme

of education. In announcing this, Hedwig FBrster, the adviser on

girls' schooling in the Prussian Ministry of Education, stressed

that there would be a sharp reduction in the academic content of

girls' senior schooling, and a corresponding increase in the time

allotted to those subjects which would guide girls into occupations

of a practical or an artistic nature, particularly into the field of

social welfarel. Emphasis was to be laid on the study of German

history and culture, as well as on health, family affairs and

physical exercise. Since motherhood was regarded as the primary

function of women, girls should be educated for occupations to which

their maternal instincts were relevant. It was conceded that medicine,

social work and teaching in girls' or primary schools should be

numbered among these vocations, and therefore it was also admitted

that academic study would have its place in the education of some

girls, and that the universities should not be closed to them2.

These ideas were the basic ones which the Nazis set out to put

into practice from 1933. But the eclectic nature of National Socialism

meant that it attracted large numbers of people who held differing

views on specific subjects. There were those, for example, who espoused

the hard -line extremism of Professor J. W. Mannhardt, epitomised in

1. Hedwig Pörster, "Die künftige Gestaltung des M dchenschulwesens ",

FZ, 8 July, 1933.

2. BA, R431I /427,letter from Prick to Reich Ministers and State

Governments, 5 October, 1933.

Paula Siber, Die Frauenfrage und ihre Lösung durch den National-
sozialismus, Berlin, 1933, p. 30.
 200.

the following passage:

"It is established that study cannot offer women

a suitable general education. Women will in future be
employed much less in occupations requiring a period of study....
Therefore the senior schools will not need to prepare
girls for the universities. Girls' senior schools will
have other tasks and aims: the special womanly abilities,
on which woman herself brought discredit because of the
desire for 'equality' with men"1.

Those who felt that this point of view was perhaps too rigid

contended that women might perform adequately, and even well,

exceptionally, in many academic subjects, but drew the line at the

suggestion that girls might study mathematics and the deductive

sciences successfully, since women were intuitive by nature rather

than rational2. Protests, such as that made in 1934 by Dr. Heinrich

Voigts, himself a teacher, that a mathematical training could at

least help women to carry out their household management with greater

efficiency3, failed to shake this prejudice4. The once reasonably

favourable position of women in mathematics and science departments

in the universities began to deteriorate after 1933. This was the

result of a deliberate policy, by which men were given preference in

positions which required a scientific or mathematical training, as

a matter of principle, so that poor employment prospects acted as a

disincentive to girls who might have studied these subjects, although

1. J. W. Mannhardt, Hochschulrevolution, Hamburg, 1933, p. 72.

2. Fränkische Tageszeitung, op. cit.

3. Heinrich Voigts, "Der mathematische Unterricht in der M,dchenschule

des völkischen Staates", D.Mád., February 1934, p. 27.

4. An example of the persistence of this prejudice is to be found in

Anna Kottenhoff, "Vom Wesen und von der Verantwortung des geistig-
en Frauenschaffens ", FK, January 1939, P. 4.
 201.

the door was by no means closed to such study1.

Most of the protests against the new guide -lines announced

for girls' education came, as might have been expected, from

women. The less predictable feature of this was that they came from

women sympathetic to the Nazis. Certainly, potential political

opposition had been quickly and successfully silenced, while

"unreliable" individuals were neutralised by being banned from

publishing books and articles2. But in the first year of Nazi rule

a number of pamphlets appeared, which, while carefully stating support

for the new order, criticised the attacks which had been made on the

fitness of women for academic study. Gertrud Baumgart claimed that

there was a "very strong current running against intellectual women

in the universities ". She cited as the reason for this the

indiscriminate admission of school -leavers of both sexes who were ill-

suited to university study. Her solution was a more rigorous selection

process for all students, not just for women. Gertrud Baumgart

demanded the education of women to national and social responsibility,

and asserted that this implied both physical and intellectual training,

and the admission of women to the universities and to the professions3.

A similar demand for equal treatment for aspiring students of

both sexes came from Irmgard Reichenau, in an open letter to Adolf Hitler.

She argued that the division between the sexes was narrower than that

1. Luise Raulf, "Frau und Naturwissenschaft ", _Hi, November 1937, p. 13.

2. "1. Verordnung zur Durchführung des Reichskulturkammergesetzes ",

RGB, 1933 I, 1 November, 1933, pp. 797 -98.

George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture, London, 1966, p. 135.

3. Gertrud Baumgart, Frauenbewegung Gestern und Heute, Heidelberg, 1933,

pp. 17 and 31.
 202.

between the talented and the less gifted, whether they were men

or women. In true Nazi fashion she deplored "over- intellectuality ",

which, she claimed, however, was more likely to be found in men than

in women1. Another writer, Dorothea Klaje-Wenzel, was specifically

concerned about the prospects for women who wanted to study medicine,

and expressed the fear that there would be an attempt to bar women from

medical faculties2. But one of the leading figures in the Nazi

women's organisation in the early days of power, Paula Siber, was

quick to point out that all branches of university study were indeed

open to women, and cited medicine as one which could be considered

particularly suitable for them3.

The extent to which National Socialist ideas bore a variety

of interpretations is well illustrated in an exchange in a student

magazine in 1935. In one edition, a male student leader asserted

categorically that the universities should be largely a male preserve,

with women admitted as guests in those instances where the "special

womanly occupations" necessitated a measure of academic training. He

admitted that the surplus of women in the population might mean that

some women would have to do men's jobs, but denied that a place should

be made for them in academic occupations4. This point of view is

hardly distinguishable from that expressed before the Machtübernahme

by men who feared female competition for scarce professional positions.

1. Irmgard Reichenau, "Die begabte Frau", Irmgard Reichenau (ed.),

Deutsche Frauen an Adolf Hitler, Leipzig, 1934, pp. 24-25.

2. Dorothea Klaje-Wenzel, Die Frau in der Volksgemeinschaft, Leipzig,

1934, p. 36.

3. Siber, loc. cit.

4. Otto Schuster in Wissen und Dienst, 1935, no. 1, p. 13.

 203.

It was hotly contested in the following edition of the magazine by

a girl student who agreed that clarification of the status of women

vis -a -vis higher education was needed, but claimed that both male

and female students should be able to serve the Volk, together and

not in opposition to each other. Her spirited defence of the right

of women to study was, however, somewhat different from the uninhibited

retaliation women had made in the face of male attacks before 1933:

it was necessarily accompanied by pious affirmations of unswerving

loyalty to Hitler, of the ideal of motherhood as woman's goal, and of

opposition to any idea of "emancipation "l.

It is clear that the conflict between men and women over the

right of women to study in universities was generated by the prospect,

in the early 1930s, of a limitation of student numbers in the face of

graduate unemployment, and was not the result of the policies of

the Nazi Government. Nazi beliefs about the nature and role of women,

which were constantly being reiterated, did, however, give the

impression that the Government was unequivocally on the side of the

men, and that if -there were too many students women would be the first

to be excluded. But in the Nazi State theory and practice were by no

means always synonymous, as became increasingly more apparent as the

1930s progressed and circumstances changed.

B. Nazi Policies in the field of Higher Education for Girls

The first problem facing the new Government in education was

one of sheer numbers, and so little time was wasted in beginning an

offensive against university "inflation". Kálin,,ïinister responsible

for the Employment Exchanges, vas, however, only continuing a process

1. Edith Runge in Wissen und Dienst, 1935, no. 2, pp. 39 -40.

 204.

he had begun under the previous regime when he predicted a crisis in

the professional labour market in the next four or five years; this

was the result, he said, of the trebling of student numbers since 1914.

He repeated the conclusion drawn by the committee which had been

looking at the problem since 1930, that in future many school -leavers

would have to find their niche in positions which did not require

academic study, even if they were qualified for university entrance1.

Two days later, still less than three weeks after the Machtübernahme,

it was announced that each applicant for higher education was to be

vetted by an examination board, and those regarded as least suitable

were to be advised against proceeding to a college. Those who did not

heed such advice were to be observed closely during their first

three semesters so that an assessment of their suitability could better

be made2. As yet, then, there was no question either of outright

coercion being used, or of girls being treated differently from boys.

It became clear, however, that the selection process was designed

to serve a purpose additional to that of cutting down numbers:

"suitability" was to be gauged partly by a character reference, so

that those considered politically or socially undesirable by the

Government could be prevented from entering the universities3.

Apart from this last discrimination, the policy followed here

was largely that envisaged under the Weimar governments; but the

important thing is that action was at last being taken, action which

1. BA, R36/1929, "Gesichtspunkte für die Berufsberatung der Abitur-

ienten in der Krise ", letter of 16 February, 1933.

2. BA, R4311/936, "Ein Sieb für das Studium ", cutting from Vossische
Zeitung, 18 February, 1933.

3. Joachim Haupt, Neuordnunim Schulwesen und Hochschulwesen, Berlin,

1933, p. 9.
 205.

had been lacking because of the absence both of a central agency

to direct education and of strong and stable government. The German

universities were administered by the government of the state to

which they belonged, so a unified policy had been difficult to

achieve1. But Frick, the new Reich Minister of the Interior,

overrode the difficulties and achieved agreement on united action on

the matter of selecting university entrants by the Education Ministers

of each Land, in February 19332. As part of the new Government's

policy of centralisation, Frick assumed responsibility for educational

matters at the national level; the creation of a section in his

Ministry specifically to deal with education signalled the end of the

autonomy enjoyed in this area by the Lander3. Finally, a Reich

Ministry of Education was created by an order of President Hindenburg

on 1 May, 1934, and ten days later Bernhard Rust, Prussian Education

Minister, was appointed Reich Minister, on Hitler's nomination4.

Henceforth, the Minister merely transmitted orders to the

Reichsstatthalter, and, while the implementing of the orders was in

the hands of the Lander, they could no longer have any real independence

in educational affairs - especially important at the school]evel -

and their room for unilateral manoeuvre was increasingly diminished5.

1. Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst publication, German

Universities - a Manual for Foreign Scholars and Students, Berlin,
1932, p. 7.

2. BA, loc. cit.

3. Eilers, op. cit., p. 54.

4. Schumann, op. cit., p. 43.

W. Bade, Der Weg des Dritten Reiches, Lübeck, 1935, vol. 3, p. 36.

5. Eilers, op. cit., pp. 55 -57.

 206.

The tactics of exhortation and counsel employed to try to

reduce student numbers in the first instance were apparently not

sufficient, for it was found necessary to issue on 25 April, 1933,

a national law "to combat the surplus in German schools and colleges ".

This ordered that, apart from the statutory minimum attendance

requirements, the number of pupils and students was to be so regulated

as to safeguard basic educational standards and to provide an adequate

number of candidates for the professions. The governments of the

Lander were to be responsible for deciding what numbers their senior

schools and colleges could accommodate. But it was definitely

stipulated that non- "Aryans" were to enjoy no higher representation

in these institutions than they did in the total populationl. This

was the first statutory discrimination in education against a specific

group, and while it is in no way to be condoned, it could hardly have

been unexpected, given the Nazis' fantastic and fanatical racial

beliefs.

The law of 25 April equally failed to have the desired effect,

so that Frick felt it necessary to order a much more explicit

restriction, on 28 December, 1933. The new order fixed a definite

quota for the total number of new students to be admitted to

universities and colleges each year: of the 15,000 to be allowed to

matriculate for the first time each Land was to be allotted a detailed

number which it might not exceed, and the choice was to be made on the

basis of the mental and physical maturity, the strength of character,

and the political reliability of the candidates. For the first time,

1. "Gesetz gegen die fberfiillung deutscher Schulen und Hochschulen ",

RGB, 1933 I, 25 April, 1933, p. 225.
 207.

girls were singled out for particular restriction, since it was

stipulated that in no case were their numbers to exceed 10% of the

quota allowed for each Land. School- leavers who were not admitted to

colleges were advised to take up an occupation of a practical naturel,

in keeping with Nazi theory as expressed in Point 20 of the Party

Programme. In the case of girls, this invariably meant domestic

service or work on a farm.

The restrictions imposed on entry to higher education have

generally been regarded a manifestation of the philistinism and

evil -mindedness of the Nazis. Certainly, the singling out of non -

"Aryans" and political opponents for limitation in the first instance

may be seen at least partly in this light. But apart from this, the

fixing of some kind of quota was but a logical conclusion to the

economic depression and its effects on the employability of graduates;

it was also the continuation, in a much more effective way, of a policy

already embarked on before the Machtübernahme, and one which had

found vocal supporters among people of differing political

persuasions. And if a special restriction on the intake of girl

students seemed to be a manifestation of the Nazi view of women's role,

it must be remembered that there had already, in 1929, been a

measure directed specifically at restricting girl entrants to colleges

of physical education. As was almost invariably the case, the Nazis

could lay no claim to originality.

They did, however, use the occasion for a propaganda exercise:

Dr. Pfundtner, Prick's Secretary of State, said in a broadcast two

1. BA, R4311/ß36, "Zahlenmüssige Begrenzung des Zuganges zu den

Hochschulen ", Wolff's Telegraphisches Büro, 28 December, 1933.
 208.

weeks after the order that a restriction on numbers had been

necessary for a sound reconstitution of the universities after the

unhealthy "liberalism" of the previous regime. The burden of his

message was that the overestimation of intellectual pursuits and the

undervaluing of practical work were mistakes which must be rectified.

In order to console those who might now feel deprived of the chance

of advancement, he stressed that the National Socialist revolution

had shown that men without an academic education could rise to

occupy the highest positions in the State1.

Even before the statutory limitation was in force the number

of new entrants to all colleges had actually been dropping, after

reaching an abnormally high point of almost 30,000 in 1931; the

1933 figure was lower than this by one -third, at less than 21,000.

Once the restriction applied, the total intake for 1934 was again

lower by one- third, at under 14,000, well below the quota. But the

aim of restricting girls to 10ó of all new entrants was not realised;

although a proportionately smaller number of girls was admitted in

1934 than in 1933, the figure for 1934 was still as high as 12.5ö2.

It was in fact the very success of the quota law which led Rust

to rescind what he termed an "only temporary measure" in February

1935, when it had been in force for little more than a year and

effective for only the 1934 intake of students3. Application of the

law was not, however, the only reason for the reduction by one -third

1. "Die Begrenzung des Zuzugs zu den Hochschulen: Rundfunkvortrag

des Staatssekretärs Pfundtner ", VB, 12 January, 1934.

2. Deutsche Hochschulstatistik, Berlin, 1934/35, pp *4-*5.

3. Report in `I'S, 1935, vol. 15, no. 9, p. 334.

 209.

of the total number of students in the three- and -a -half years after

1931, when student numbers had indeed been abnormally highl. Part

of the cause was that the smaller numbers of children born during the

First World War were now reaching university age. In addition,

matriculation had generally been delayed, rather than averted, by the

introduction of compulsory Labour Service for all school -leavers

wishing to proceed to higher education; thus, potential new students

for the summer semester of 1934 did not in fact matriculate for the

first time until winter 1934 -352. The reintroduction of conscription

in March 1935 also affected student numbers: the withdrawal of

young men to perform military service before admission to university

was an important factor in the decline to 57,000 in the number of

students in summer 1935; this was the lowest figure there had been

since 1916, in war-time. That this was largely due to a reduction in

the number of male students can be seen from the fact that in 1935

the proportion of girls in the student body had once again risen to

almost 1770 .

While the Technical Universities, which specialised in the

applied sciences and engineering, and in which the number of girl

students was always very small, followed a pattern roughly similar

to that of the conventional universities, the teacher -training colleges

showed a different trend. In 1935 these Hochschule fflr

1. Conclusion drawn from figures given in St.J.: 1932, pp. 426 -27;
1933, pp. 522 -23; 1934, PP. 534 -35; 1935, PP. 520 -21.

2. BA, 84311 /936, "Das DiensthalbjAhr der Studenten", cutting from

Vossische Zeitung, 9 March, 1934.

3. Calculated from figures in St:J., 1936, pp. 544 -45

 210.

Lehrerbildung1 had a record number of students, but the lowest -ever

percentage of girls among them, at 12%; this was in contrast to a

share of over 30 only two- and -a -half years earlier But a

reduction of these dimensions was not, apparently, considered

sufficient, since in April 1936 Rust placed a firm restriction on

the number of girls to be admitted to teacher -training; colleges. He

explained that there were already more than enough women senior school

teachers, and, in addition, a large number of students preparing

for this career. In order, therefore, to arrest the flow of girls

into teaching, none was to be admitted to a Prussian college in the

winter semester of 1936 -37. The combining of the Prussian with the

Reich Education Ministry at the beginning of 19353 made it unlikely

that this order would not also apply to the small number of teacher -

training colleges outside Prussia. In order to avoid circumvention

of the order by school -leavers, it was also stipulated that no girl

who was aiming to teach would be admitted directly to a university;

she must first spend two semesters at a teacher -training college.

Rust conceded that this restriction might be lifted for the summer

semester of 1937, but only to an extent compatible with the demands

1. The Prussian Education Minister, Rust, issued orders on 20 April

and 6 May,'1933, to the effect that the classically-derived name
Pädagogische Akademie should be replaced by the truly Germanic
Hochschule ftir Lehrerbildung, as part of the campaign to stamp
out internationalism and make students more nationally conscious.
This is described in Schumann, op. cit., p. 21, and Haupt, op.
cit., pp. 22 -23. The orders affected most colleges, since in
1933 eight of the ten teacher- training colleges in Germany were
in Prussia (St.J., 1934, p. 538).

2. Calculated from figures given in St.J.: 1936, pp. 547 -48; 1933,
pp. 526 -27.

3. Eilers, op. cit., p. 55.

 211.

of the labour market. Girls who would be obliged by this measure

to wait for a year before applying. for a college place were advised

to perform Labour Service and, if possible, also to engage in some

form of domestic service or work on a farm1.

This last exhortation should not lead to the impression that

the entire measure was designed to prevent girls from receiving

higher education and preparing themselves for a career outside the

home. The Nazis always hoped, of course, that all girls would have

some experience of household tasks before they married, and that all

young people training for non-manual careers would have practical

experience of physical work; these aims could well be fulfilled in

this enforced period of waiting between school and college, which

was very necessary in view of the surplus of teachers over available

teaching positions. The limitation in this case did, however, apply

only to girls, which was in line with Nazi Party policy that men

should have preference in career opportunities to enable them to marry

and support a family as early as possible. But the admission of

girls was only to be delayed, and not prevented, since teaching was

one of the occupations regarded as suitable for women in Nazi theory.

Rust's restriction of April 1936 was, in fact, singularly

ineffective: in the winter semester of 1936 -37 there was actually an

increase in the number of girls attending teacher-training colleges,

to the extent that there were almost twice as many as there had been

even in the peak year of 1931. Over one -third of these 1500 girls

attended the two-year-old college in Hanover, which was exclusively

1. "Studium der Abiturientinnen, die Studienrätinnen oder Volks-

schullehrerinnen werden wollen ", DWEuV, 1936, no. 288, 8 April,
1936, p. 209.
 212.

for girl students, while another 188 were at the new, all- female

college at Schneidemühl1. Particularly in view of the fact that both

these colleges were in Prussia, it is clear that, for some reason,

the Minister's order was not being enforced, in spite of the stress

he had laid on its necessity. And yet, this does not seem to have

been because Rust had changed his mind, because in April 1937 he

tried another tactic: he decreed that in future the admission of

girls to teacher -training colleges should take place only once a

year, in autumn, instead of twice a year, as had formerly been the

case. He also made it clear that while 1937 school -leavers were

permitted to apply for a place in 1937, preference would be given to

those who had left school in earlier years; and if there were places

available for 1937 school -leavers, preference would be given to

members of the Bund deutscher M del (League of German Girls)2. The

difference between this order and the one of a year earlier was that

the former's provisions applied in a corresponding way to intending

male students, whereas the 1936 decree had applied specifically to

girls; it is thus quite clear that in this branch of higher education

the Nazi Government did not relentlessly discriminate against girls.

Anxiety about the number of entrants to teacher -training colleges

took a different form from 1937. Rust himself opened a new college

in Koblenz, exclusively for girl students, with words about "the

special mission of women teachers" in November of that year3. The

1. Conclusions drawn from figures given in St.J., 1937, p. 582.

2. "Aufnahme an den preussischen Hochschulen für Lehrerbildung, Herbst

1937 ", D'WiiuV, 1937, no. 255, 21 April, 1937, pp. 241 -42.

3. BA, R431Ij938b, "Rust eröffnet Hochschule für Lehrerinnenbildung,

Koblenz ", Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, no. 1532, 10 November, 1937.
 213.

changed circumstances of the employment market had led to a change of

attitude, although - in spite of attempts to prevent this - the number

of students of both sexes training for the teaching profession had

continued to rise sharply. The reason was that even before the war

withdrew men from work into the armed forces, it had become apparent

that there would soon be a shortage of teachers. Here, as in many other

occupations, the only reserve of labour was among women. Therefore

in order to encourage recruitment to the profession, it was announced

at the end of 1939 that the number of special courses designed to

prepare girls with only an elementary school education for entry

to teacher -training colleges would be doubled, from 80 to 1601.

Involvement in the Second World !:Jar made serious a shortage of trained

teachers which had thus even previously been a source of concern.

The Nazis' wholesale departure from their earlier policy of

trying to restrict the entry of girls into teaching resulted in girls'

constituting 42 of the colleges' student population in summer 1939,

still in peace -time. But even this unprecedentedly high share was

more than doubled once the war was under way, so that in summer 1940

the figure was 80. And, unlike the universities, the colleges had

not suffered a severe drop in absolute numbers: the 1940 figure was

significantly larger than that of the year of the Hochschulinflation,

19312. The Government had really only continued the policies of the

later Weimar period in imposing - or, at least, trying to impose -

a limit on entry to over -full occupations and to the courses preparatory

1. "Aufbaulehrgänge für Mtdchen von der Volksschule zur Akademie für

Lehrerbildung", Die Frau, December 1939, p. 84.

2. Calculated from figures given in St.J.: 1939/40, p. 620; 1941/42,

p. 645.
 214.

to these occupations. Practical considerations were equally at

work in the volte -face which resulted in positive encouragement to

girls to prepare themselves for a teaching career, given the

increasing shortage of male candidates.

But doctrine was not to be abandoned altogether, especially

when it could be reconciled with necessity; thus, retreat from one

point of earlier Nazi policy, for practical reasons, was matched by

insistence on the implementation of another. In January 1937

compulsory domestic science and needlework, to the extent of four

hours each week in the first four semesters, were prescribed for all

girl students at teacher -training colleges who planned to teach in

senior schools. This was absolutely consistent with the Nazi aim of

ensuring that all girls received a "womanly" education. But it should

not be seen as an attempt to guide girls towards housekeeping rather

than a profession. That it was an integral part of the anti -

intellectualism of the Nazis and their emphasis on the virtues of

practical skills is shown by another clause in the same order: this

decreed compulsory courses in technical subjects for the male students

at the same hours as the girls had their homecraft courses'. This

provision does, however, underline the.Nazis' insistence on the separate

functions of the sexes. But there was only a degree of actual

segregation in the colleges, in spite of the Nazis' opposition to

coeducation. Of the twenty-eight teacher -training colleges, exactly

half were for students of both sexes, while eleven admitted only men,

and three were exclusively for women2.

1. IfZ, MA 1163, frame 95585, "Entwurf einer Reichsregelung der

Ausbildung fttr das Lehramt an h8heren Schulen ", 16 January, 1937.

2. Homeyer, op. cit., p. K4.

 215.

The change in official policy, as exemplified by the new

attitude to teacher-training candidates, became increasingly

apparent and urgent from 1936 onwards. Early in 1937, Rust announced

that in future school- leavers were to be encouraged to enter the

universities in greater numbers, now that the Hochschulinflation

was at an end, particularly in order to study scientific and technical

subjects. The Four Year Plan, announced in September 1936, required

a large number of chemists and engineers, and the general expansion

which would result from it would mean a demand also for experts in

every other discipline. In view of the urgency of the matter, Rust

declared that senior schooling was to be shortened by one year1.

It was quickly made clear that the new policies were not to be

restricted to men. Even a few days before the Four Year Plan had been

announced, the Thursday women's section of the Party's official

newspaper, the VBlkischer Beobachter, was entirely devoted to the

justification of both an academic education and professional

employment for women, insofar, it was emphasised as these would benefit

the community. Parents were urged to make sacrifices, if necessary,

to give a talented daughter the chance of higher education, so that

the nation might benefit from her particular abilities. The idea of

studying for one's own satisfaction was obviously still regarded as

egotistic and decadent. The final judgment was: "It is wrong if

to -day a gifted and capable girl takes the attitude that there is no

point in studying because she will not find employment "2.

1. BA, R431I/938b, "Die Inflation auf den Hochschulen beendet ",

Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, no. 74, 18 January, 1937.

2. "Die Akademikerin von heute" and ""Was Zahlen lehren ", VB, 4
September, 1936.
 216.

The new course was dutifully supported by the representatives

of the women's organisations, in the same way that the old ideas

had been when they were in vogue. Trude Btirkner, national leader

of the Bund deutscher Madel, expressed the view that girls of

ability who wanted to enter a profession ought to attend a university,

since antagonism to the universities was "not in accordance with the

attitude of the BDW'1.

But in spite of official exhortations, student numbers continued

to decline in the mid -to -late 1930s, and the _proportion of girls

in the student body alsó declined, until the outbreak of the Second

World War. From a share of over 18% in the summer semester of 1933,

girls' representation in the universities dropped to less than 15%

in the winter semester of 1937 -38, but revived to its highest point

yet in autumn 1939, at 20¡2. This was, of course, at a time when the

total number of students was greatly reduced by the removal of a large

number of male students who, it was felt, could better serve their

country in the armed forces in war -time. In the following terms3 student

1. Report in Die Frau, April 1937, p. 402.

2. Calculated from figures given in St.J.: 1934, pp. 534 -35; 1938,
p. 602; 1939/40, p. 615.

3. The traditional unit of the Semester, or Halb;jahr, as the Nazis

preferred to say, was abandoned in the autumn of 1939, and the
Trimester was introduced as the division of the academic year, to
allow greater flexibility in war-time, and particularly to condense
the period required for the completion of a degree, by cutting down
the long summer vacation. This was envisaged as purely a war -time
expedient which would lapse with the conclusion of peace. An
account of this is given in Hans Huber, Erziehung and Wissenschaft
im Kriege, Berlin, 1940, pp. 18 -20. Huber was a senior civil
servant in the Reich Ministry of Education. In fact, the semester
was reinstated still during the war, in 1941 (IfZ, MA 441/6, frame
2- 757139, "Zur Lage an den deutschen Hochschulen im SS 1942 ", MadR,
16 July, 1942).
 217.

numbers rose again slightly, and the now favourable position of

women improved even further, so that in the third term of 1940

they comprised almost 30% of all students in German universities1.

Averaged figures, however, disguise the fact that girls'

representation varied from university to university, and from subject

to subject. Of the individual universities, two which were medium -

sized, Marburg and Heidelberg, had a consistently high proportion of

girl students, at over 20% for much of the 1930s. The general

decline in representation, which was most marked between autumn 1936

and spring 1938, affected the larger universities of Berlin and

Bonn and the medium -sized ones of Jena and Monster most, leaving

girls at this time with a smaller share than they had enjoyed ten

years earlier. 7alile all the other universities showed a more

favourable female representation 'throughout, it was at 7illrzburg

alone that the percentage of girls in the student body remained

above the high level of 1930 throughout the 1930s2.

Girls were traditionally best represented in arts subjects,

and from 1931 they occupied more than one -third of all places in

arts faculties. In absolute terms, however, the number of girls

studying medicine overtook that in arts, although their share of

places in medical faculties remained for the most part around one -

fifth. This trend certainly rendered groundless early fears that

the Nazis would ban, or at least strongly discourage, the admission

1. Calculated from figures given in St.J., 1941/42 , P. 640.

2. Conclusions drawn from figures given in St.J.: 1926, p. 401;

1931, p, 430; 1932, p. 426; 1933, P. 522; 1934, P. 534; 1935,
p. 522; 1936, p. 544 -46; 1937, P. 582; 1938, P- 602; 1:-39/40,
PP. 615 -16; 1941/42, pp. 640 -41.
 218.

of women to the study of medicine. The other subject which showed

a consistently high percentage of girl students was pharmacy, where

they constituted between 20$ and 30% of the total number of students

throughout the 1930s, reaching the uniquely high figure of 52% in

1940: in no other subject did girls enjoy anything approaching

this share at this timet.

In contrast to the consistently strong position of women in

arts, medicine and pharmacy, the favourable representation enjoyed

by girl students in the sciences in the early 1930s was not maintained.

From 25% in physics and mathematics in 1931, their share fell to the

low level of 7ó in the winter semester of 1937 -38; in absolute terms,

this meant a drop from almost 2,800 to a mere 99. The number of

girl students in chemistry had always been much smaller than that in

maths. and physics; at the beginning of the 1930s, their numbers

were consistently around 500, in percentual terms between 15g and 17%

of the total. A less spectacular, but still significant, drop in

their numbers brought their share in 1937 -38 to 8%, representing

208 girls2. This development was, of course, the result of deliberate

Government policy in the early years of Nazi rule. But by the time

it became really effective, its consequences were giving rise to

anxiety, in view of the need for skilled scientific and technical

personnel which became pressing in the later 1930s. In November 1937

a writer in a women's magazine observed in an article entitled

"Woman and Science" that the number of girl students in scientific

1. Calculations made from figures given in St.J.: 1932, pp. 426 -27;
1933, pp. 522 -23; 1934, PP- 534 -35; 1935, pp. 520 -21; 1936,
PP- 544 -45; 1937, pp. 580 -81; 1941/42, p. 644.

2. Ibid.
 219.

subjects had "fallen alarmingly ". She expressed the fervent

hope that girls who had the ability and the application would turn

to these subjects, since their contribution "to the serious and

important work of scientific investigation is essential to- day "1.

As the number of girl students in science faculties had

been reduced as a result of Government policy, so the reversal of

that policy led to a revival of girls' fortunes in this area. The

position reached in the winter of 1937 -38 was, as it transpired,

their nadir, and the improvement in their representation from then on

was given added impetus by the outbreak of war in September 1939,

which led to even higher demands on scientists simultaneous with

the withdrawal of men from civilian occupations into the armed forces.

By 1940, girl chémistry students once more numbered over 500, with a

share of 14%. At the same time, the number of girls studying maths.

and physics rose to only 133, but these constituted 17% of all the

students in this field, a very high proportion for subjects once

specifically pronounced unsuitable for girls2. As a writer in the

Frankfurter Zeitung put it:

"The technical and scientific occupations, which were long

regarded as a male preserve, are now once again open to
women as chemists, physicists, engineers, biologists, on
account of the shortage of male candidates "3.

The fortunes of girl students in both law and economics followed,

a trend similar to that observed in the sciences. In the law faculties,

their numbers declined steadily and sharply from over 1,000 in 1932

1. Luise Raulf, loc. cit.

2. Calculated from figures given in St.J., 1941/42, p. 643.

3. Margaret Esch, "Die Aussichten des Frauenstudiums ", FZ, 19 March,

1939
 220.

until in winter 1937 -38 there were a mere 59 girlsl. This was not

caused wholly by Hitler's pronouncement that women should no longer

be employed as judges and barristers, which came in 19362; but his

view would doubtless ensure that the downward trend in girls' numbers

continued. In economics, the decline was less sharp, but equally

steady: while over 1,000 girls had been studying economics in

summer 1931, by 1937 -38 there were only 1943. Again, the Nazis might

have congratulated themselves on the effectiveness of their initial

policy by the end of 1937, had circumstances not changed and the need

for skilled personnel required to administer the new policies of the

Four Year Plan paralleled the need for scientists to operate it. The

value of women economists was explained and stressed in the various

publications directed specifically at women4, and the number of girls

in economics departments began to revives.

In 1937, too, there was growing concern about the decline in

the number of girl law students. Dr. Eben- Servaes, the legal expert

in the National Women's Leadership and leader of the Nazi Association

of Women Lawyers, sent a circular to her representatives in each Gau

in August 1937, asking how many girl law students there were in the

area and how far advanced their studies were, with a view to trying

1. Calculations made from figures given in St.J.: 1932, pp. 426 -27;
1933, Pp. 522 -23; 1941/42, p. 643.

2. BA, R431I /427, letter from Bormann to Frank, 24 August, 1936. This
will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

3. Calculations made from figures given in St.J., loc. cit.

4. See, e.g., "Was Zahlen lehren", in the supplement "Die deutsche

Frau", VB, 4 September, 1936; Harilese Cremer, "Mitarbeit der
Frau in der Wirtschaftswissenschaft ", i+'K, November 1937, p. 11.

5. Conclusion drawn from figures given in St.J., 1941/42, p. 643.

 221.

to improve recruitment to law faculties. She explained that

although Hitler's ban on women lawyers' being admitted to practice

in the courts had closed this avenue to female graduates, there

were many other areas in which their participation would be

increasingly necessary1. Girls' numbers in law faculties did revive

from about this time2, but not, apparently, enough, since a legal

expert in the Party's section for academic affairs urged in August

1939 that "each girl with university entrance qualifications ought

to consider whether she is suited to a legal career, rather than

just medicine or teaching "3. This was the situation even before

the outbreak of the Second World War; in the autumn of 1939, with

young men called up for active service, the shortage of law graduates

began to be acute4.

It is clear, then, that the reasons for encouraging girls

to take up academic study in fields once pronounced unsuitable for

them were purely practical. Equally practical reasons, however,

lay behind the continuing discouragement, from 1936 onwards, of

students from studying dentistry. The Ministry of the Interior

announced on 3 August, 1936, that, until further notice, new students

would not be allowed to sit the necessary State examinations because

there was a large surplus of dentists. This decision was slightly

mitigated after an agreement between the Ministers of Education and

1. HA, Reel 13, folder 253, "Rundschreiben Nr. FW 76/37 ", from Ilse
Eben -Servaes to her representatives in the Gaue, 12 August, 1937.

2. Conclusion drawn from figures given in St.J., loc. cit.

3. IfZ, MA 205, NSDAP /HA-Wissenschaft, Dr. W. Donke, "Der Rechts-

wahrer", cutting from Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 August, 1939.

4. IfZ, MA 441/1, frames 2- 750072/4, BziL, 13 October and 10 November,

1939.
 222.

the Interior, by which there would be a quota agreed between Frick

and the leader of the dentists' organisation instead of a total ban

on new entrants. Pfundtner, Prick's Secretary of State, still found

it necessary to give in addition the warning that prospects in the

profession remained poor and precarious'. This concern about entry

to dental faculties and to the profession itself was directed at men

and women alike, without differentiation between them.

Girls had only ever formed a small minority in the Technical

Universities, with an attendance figure of above 900 between 1931

and 1933, which dropped to 213 by winter 1937 -38, while the number

of male students declined much less drastically. Although these

institutions prepared students precisely for those occupations

deemed vital for the operation of the Four Year Plan, it was not until

after the start of the war that the number of girl students revived

significantly, passing the 800 mark at the end of 19402. This figure

gave them a share of 9%, twice as high as the peak of their

representation during the years of the Hochschulinflation. Even

allowing for the withdrawal of a substantial number of male students

for war service, it is therefore evident that girls were responding

to the encouragement given to them from 1936 onwards to engage in the

study of scientific and technical subjects.

It was in fact only the increased attendance of girls at the

universities that kept student numbers from falling to negligible

1. "Aufhebung der Sperre des Neuzugangs zum zahnärztlichen Studium

und zum Dentistenberuf ", DVEuV 1937, no. 200, 22 March 1937,
-,

p. 187.

2. Calculated from figures given in St.J.: 1932, p. 429; 1933, p. 525;

1938, p. 602; 1941/42, p. 641.
 223.

proportions during the war. Young men did continue to study when

they were on leave from their units, but in summer 1942 it was

reported that the return of many of them to the army was followed

by an actual rise in numbers at some universities, because of the

large intake of girls. In Berlin at this time, girls' numbers had

increased by 20A, compared with the winter semester of 1941 -42, and

for the first time they actually constituted a majority of the

students in three faculties there. At Freiburg, there were

altogether more girls than men at this time. Medicine and the arts

subjects continued to be the fields most favoured, but the sciences

also benefited, so that at Freiburg, Gottingen, Halle, Berlin and

Würzburg there were more girls than boys studying science. This

general development was considered desirable, since the exodus of men

from the professions and academic training had left a great shortage

of recruits in these fields, which would have to be made good by

admitting women1.

Even if there had been no Four Year Plan and no Second World

War, girl students and graduates would have been essential to the

Nazi order; a system based on élitism requires a corps of leaders.

Rust acknowledged this when he expressed the desire to found universities

in Germany on the model of Oxford and Cambridge, which provided the

leading element in British public life2. The network of organisations

which the Nazis built up to some extent before, and much more

intensively after, the Machtübernahme needed leaders who were

intelligent and educated, as well as devoted Party hacks. And this

1. IfZ, Mil 441/6, frames 2- 757139 -41, op. cit.

2. "Rede des Preussischen Kultusministers Rust bei der Einweihung der

landgebundenen Hochschule für Lehrerbildung in Lauenberg, 24. Juni
1933 ", Hiller, op. cit., p. 43.
 224.

applied to women as well as men, given the Nazis' view that the

functions of the sexes should be kept separate. The initial

experience in 1933 of having a man in direct charge of the women's

organisations had been a singularly unhappy one, and after this the

day -to -day running of them had been left in the hands of the

women themselves, even if ultimate authority rested with the Party's

male leadership1. Thus, trained personnel was required for the

Frauenwerk, the Women's Section of the Labour Front, the BdM, the

Women's Labour Service and the NSV; there was even a place for

women in research institutes2. An example of this last category

was Hildegard Behr, who received her doctorate in February 1937 and

went on to become a research worker in a genealogical records office3.

The leader of the Nazi student organisation, Dr. Scheel, boasted

that the new Germany had opened up employment prospects for women

in a wide variety of fields requiring an academic education, without

departing from the Nazi principle of guiding women into jobs

suited to the female nature4. There was some justification for this

claim, although it became increasingly clear in the 1930s that the

concept of work suitable for women was -rather elastic.

The Nazis were well aware that the existence of an academic

elite whose members were destined to occupy the leading positions

might lead to the formation of a compact group within the community

which would constitute an obstacle to national unity and to complete

1. This is discussed in detail in Chapter 6.

2. Gustav Adolf Scheel, "Aufgaben und Erziehungsform des deutschen

Studententums ", Deutscher Hochschulfahrer, 1938, p. 12.

3. BDC, Hildegard Behr, "Lebenslauf, 27. November 1937 ".

4. Gustav Adolf Scheel, loc. cit.

 225.

control by the Party. Male students were brought into close contact

with contemporaries from all walks of life once military service was

introduced in 1935. In addition, from 1933 the Labour Service,

which had formerly been purely voluntary, became compulsory for male

students1. Then in March 1934 an order was issued which stipulated

that all school- leavers of both sexes who sought admission to higher

education must first perform six months' Labour Service2. This

requirement fulfilled three important functions. In the first place,

it was an effective way of reducing student numbers immediately, in

1934, when this aim was a top priority. In addition, those young

people endowed with intellectual gifts were to be educated to respect

the value of manual work, and therefore to respect those of their

fellow-citizens who performed it. Finally, a cheap reserve of labour

was automatically permanently available for those jobs - particularly

on the land- which were regarded as vital but which were unattractive

to those seeking long-term employment. If the nature of the work

performed by boys and girls tended to differ, the general principles

behind the student Labour Service applied to both equally, so that the

complaint could not be made that girls were being discriminated against

by being excluded, no& that they were being privileged by being admitted

to study straight from school3.

The urgent desire to increase student numbers in the later 1930s

was clearly in conflict with the equally urgent desire to maintain a

1. Otto B. Roegele, op. cit., p. 153.

2. BA, R431I /936, "Das Diensthalbjahr der Studenten", cutting from

Vossische Zeitung, 9 March, 1934.

3. It is unfortunately not possible to give a detailed description of

the nature of the girls' Labour Service - in spite of the availability
of material - because of limitations of space.
 226.

a reserve of cheap labour for agriculture. The universities, at

any rate, were determined that they should have priority, and once

the war had begun and student numbers dropped sharply they

encouraged girls to believe that the Labour Service requirement no

longer applied. This led to some confusion, and gave rise to queries

about whether it was still in force1. Hierl was already in the

process of modifying the scheme so that in 1940 the period of service

would be tailored - in fact, reduced from twenty -six weeks to twenty-

two - to allow intending students to fit it in between leaving school

in spring and starting at university at the beginning of the autumn

term. When this change was announced, it was stressed that performance

of Labour Service remained a qualification for entry to university2.

The Government thus endeavoured to have the best of both worlds,

namely a substantial period of Labour Service rendered by each

aspiring student and as many recruits as possible provided for

university study. This manoeuvre signalled the final retreat - long

overdue - from the policy of using compulsory Labour Service as an

instrument for limiting student numbers.

Fear of academic 'elitism, one of the motives behind the

student Labour Service, did not prevent the continued existence, and

indeed the growth, of student oremisations, since these were now

designed rather to involve the students as a group in the life of the

1. BA, R36/1928, letter from the Oberbürgermeister of Herford to the

Deutscher Gemeindetag, 8 February, 1940.

2. IfZ, NA 205, NSDAP /Hauptamt Wissenschaft, "Der Arbeitsdienst der

Studierenden ", cutting from Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 23
February, 1940.

Homeyer, op. cit., p. E9.

 227.

community than to be exclusive. Matriculation automatically made

each student a member of the Deutsche Studentenschaft (National

Union of Students), in which the Nazis had had a majority since

19311. The various associations and clubs, which had been

exclusively, and often unattractively, male bastions were obliged

to dissolve by 19352, to be replaced by a single body, the Nazi

Students' Association ( NSDStB), whose local branches were responsible

for the "political education" - that is, indoctrination - of students3.

Party membership was a condition of entry to the NSDStB4, and from

1936 NSDStB members had also to belong to one of the Party's special

organisations. For girls, this meant joining either the BdM or the

NS- Frauenscha.ft5.

In keeping with the Nazi desire to separate the sexes for

most purposes, a special section for girls, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft

der nationalsozialistischen Studentinnen (ANSt), had been created in

1927 within the NSDStB°. Its aim, according to Scheel, was "to

involve the girl student in the work of the university in a manner

1. Report in Deutscher Hochschulführer, 1939, p. 87.

2. BA, R4311/938, "Gemeinschaft studentischer Verbände ", Deutsches

Nachrichtenbüro, no. 157, 29 January, 1935, and "Auflösung
studentischer Verbände", Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, no. 1599, 21
October, 1935.

3. BA, Slg.Sch., 279 -1, letter from Lammers to Derichsweiler, 1 July,

1935.

4. Ibid., "Die Neuorganisation des NSDStB", n.d. ( ?late 1932).

5. Ibid., letter from the Reich Student Leader to all offices of the
NSDStB, 22 April, 1936.

6. Anna Kottenhoff, "Aufgaben und Ziele der Studentinnenarbeit ",

Deutsches Frauenschaffen, 1938, p. 81.
 228.

compatible with.her womanliness "1. Membership of the ANSt was

theoretically voluntary, but the conclusion of an agreement between

it and the BdM, to the effect that all members of the latter who were

students must join the ANSI, achieved the aim of winning a large

membership. At a time when student numbers were being restricted, a

girl who joined the BdM had a better chance of being admitted, and so

a large number of female students automatically became members of

the ANSI. It was estimated that in 1936 65% of all girl students

were members, and that the figure rose to 75% in the following year.

This meant that the majority of girl students were obliged to

participate in their first three semesters in group discussions for

the purpose of "education to comradeship ", another euphemism for

political indoctrination2.

The ANSt was only a small part of the organised activity

available to - and to some extent compulsory for - girl students.

Like their male counterparts, they were obliged to participate in

sporting activities in their first three semesters, in keeping with

Hitler's demand in Mein Kampf3. The Frauendienst (Women's Service),

too, was compulsory, for the first six semesters. This involved

training in air -raid protection, first aid and signals - areas with

ominously martial connotations4. Then it was recommended that in their

1. Gustav Adolf Scheel, Die Reichsstudentenfihrung, Berlin, 1938, p. 28.

2. Anna Kottenhoff, op. cit., p. 83.

3. "Hochschulsportordnung ", DWEuV 1935, 30 October, 1934, no. 4, pp. 6 -10.

4. Mathilde Betz, "Einsatz der Studentinnen im Frauendienst ", Deutsches

Frauenschaffen, 1939, p. 103.

Gisela Rothe, "Die Studentin im Frauendienst ", VB, 18 October, 1934.

 229.

spare time - if, it is tempting to suggest, they had any left -

girl students should help out in the welfare and charitable

organisations, the NSV and the Winterhilfswerk (Winter Relief Scheme),

thus performing useful community service, and at the same time

associating with women and girls from all walks of life. To

demonstrate even further their consciousness of belonging to a

- national community which superseded all divisions of class or

occupation, the girls were encouraged to perform "voluntary" stints of

work in factories or on the land, in vacation, to allow women workers

an extra paid holiday, and it is clear that a small minority of

idealistic girls responded enthusiastically1. This was not the end

of the extra -mural activity expected of girl students: they were

urged to interest themselves in the work of the Nazi women's

organisation, to maintain contact with German students abroad, and

to attend meetings to which women who did not have a university

education were invited, to give them an idea of what girl students

did in their work and in their organisations2.

The creation of a great variety of activities and organisations

for girl students confirms that what the.Nazis opposed was not the

existence of universities and the presence of women in them - as had

1. Lieselotte Machwirth, "Politische Erziehung durch den ANSt ", VB

11 December, 1935.

2. "Zur Zusammenarbeit der nationalsozialistischen Studentinnen ",

Die Frau, April 1935, pp. 437 -38.

"Was eine Studentin erzahlt ", VB, 4 September, 1936.

Inge Wolff, "Hochschulgemeinschaft deutscher Frauen ", FK, November

1937, inside of front cover.

Limitations of space prevent a fuller discussion of the activities

mentioned in this paragraph.
 230.

at least partly seemed to be the case in 1933 - but rather academic

freedom and independent- minded intellectuals. The overriding Nazi

aim was to stamp out the last vestiges of "liberal" and "internationalist"

culture, and to replace it with a truly German, National Socialist

approach to learning. As Scheel proclaimed at the 1937 Party

Congress, "We do not want a scholarly National Socialism, but a

National Socialist scholarship "1. Scheel was clearly oblivious to

the fact that this aim was bound to be a contradiction in terms.

As far as girls were concerned, the ANSt leader in 1935,

Lieselotte Machwirth, explained that there had never been opposition

in Nazi ranks to the girl student per se. The Party had indeed

deplored the attendance at university of girls from wealthy

backgrounds, who were attracted by student social life but not by

academic study; equally abhorrent to the Party was the feminist blue-

stocking, whose raison d'étre was to outshine her male colleagues,

by any means2. It was these "undesirables ", along with those

disqualified for racial or political reasons, who had had to be

removed from the universities; once this was achieved, there was a

warm welcome for the girl student who worked alongside her male

counterpart as "the comrade...in the common task of achieving a

National Socialist reconstruction of the university"3.

This welcome was emphasised when in 1938 the thirtieth

1. Quoted in Otto B. Roegele, op. cit., p. 146.

2. Lieselotte Machwirth, op. cit.

3. 'Ali Michaelis, "Studentinnen an der Arbeit ", DS, July 1936,

p. 326, used these words; others expressed similar
sentiments,
e.g. Scheel, loc. cit., Anna Kottenhoff, "Das Studium als
völkischer Einsatz ", Deutsches Frauenschaffen, 1939, pp. 97 -103.
 231.

anniversary of the admission of women to Prussian universities was

made an occasion for celebration. Tribute was paid to the tenacity

of those, particularly Luise Otto and Helene Lange, who had

struggled so long for this aim, without, it was stressed, sacrificing

their humanity and womanliness. Ironically, these were the very

women who had founded and built up the omen's Movement which the Nazis

had attacked so often both before and after 1933. To try to resolve

the implicit contradiction, the Nazis claimed that the Women's

Movement, worthy in its initial phase, had fallen under the influence

of "Jewish women's rights' advocates" and a "liberal -individualistic

leadership" during the Weimar Republic. Fortunately, the story

continued, the situation had been saved by the Nazis, and the

coisequent reorientation of the universities had been towards the

"only valid standpoint: the good of the community ". The result

was that the girl student now found support instead of hostility

among the female population as a whole, and played a valuable part

in the cultural life of the nation1. The emphasis placed on these

last points was doubtless aimed at reassuring girls and their

parents that university study was not only acceptable but actually

highly desirable for those girls who had academic ability; this

reassurance was essential if the desired increase in student numbers

in the later 1930s was to be achieved, after the doubts sown by the

Government itself in earlier years about the validity of intellectual

pursuits.

From the very start, then, considerable interest was taken in

1. Else Boger -Eichler, "Rtickblick auf die Entwicklung des Frauenstudiums

in Deutschland ", Fit, July 1938, p. 3.
 232.

girl students by the Nazi Party. The first objectives with

regard to them applied equally to male students, however; these were

the elimination of those unacceptable to the Party for any reason

from higher education, and the reduction of student numbers at a time

when they were inflated out of all proportion to the employment

opportunities available to graduates. Other restrictions

necessitated by this situation generally applied to students of both

sexes in equal measure, although there were some exceptions. But

the fundamental point is that girls continued to be admitted to

higher education. in relatively large numbers. Given this, the

Nazis' chief aim was to ensure that those admitted were made aware

of the responsibility they owed the nation. Then, while girl students

were to be the comrades of their male colleagues, they were also

to be closely involved in those activities in which German women

from all sections of society took part, to remind them that what

distinguished them above all else was not their intellect but their

gender - or, as the Nazis preferred to say, their "womanliness ". As

the unemployment situation eased, however, and the shortage of

skilled personnel became apparent and then acate, the idea which

had found currency in earlier Nazi theory - that high intelligence

and womanliness were incompatible - was categorically denied.

C. Girls' Senior Schooling in the Third Reich

;bile they were prepared to retreat some distance from

earlier theory, the Nazis never departed from their insistence on the

importance of the traditional "womanly" occupations and the necessity

of training girls for these. The em phasis was therefore to be

shifted from the Weimar practice of giving domestic science instruction

 233.

only to those girls who were clearly not academically talented to

a system where all girls were given a grounding in the tasks

involved in running a home, and where the academically- inclined were

treated as the exceptions they undoubtedly were. The official view

was as follows:

"The great majority of German girls find the fulfilment

of their lives as housewives and mothers, in the family. The
variety of tasks which they must perform demands a fundamental
training in all branches of domestic science.... The vital
work of domestic science demands the education of women whose
attitudes, ability and knowledge correspond with the needs of
German life in the family and in work. Work in a household
is so varied and wide that only a thorough training in
fundamentals can lead to the essential raising of standards "1.

Hedwig Forster, a school- teacher who became an adviser in the Reich

Ministry of Education, expressed a similar sentiment:

"Only a very small proportion of our girls is ever

really suited to purely academic study in a university....
Immeasurably greater is the number of those who later as
wives and mothers, and also as career women, must and want to
play a leading part in the special areas of women's work
and women's culture "2.

These views were not so very different from those expressed by the

Prussian Ministry of Education in the 1920s3; the difference was that

the Nazi Government was determined to ensure that all girls received

a basic minimum of training in homecraft and child -care as an integral,

indeed a vitally important, part of their normal schooling.

There was already considerable provision for this kind of

1. "Einrichtung von Haushaltungsschulen (Berufsfachschulen) ", DWEuV

1939, no. 85, 1 February, 1939, pp. 86 -87.

"Einrichtung von Frauenfachschulen", DVEuV 1939, no. 87, 1

February, 1939, pp. 95 -96.

2. Hedwig Forster, "Die Frauenschulen ", DMad, 1934, no. 7, p. 317.

3. "Einjahrige Frauenschulen", BF, July/August, 1932, p. 5.

 234.

education in the elementary and middle schools, as well as in a

variety of vocational schools, although this did not deter the Nazis

from castigating the Weimar "system" both before and after 1933 for

neglecting domestic science training. It was, however, true that

few such facilities were available in the senior schools; this was

a situation which the Nazis were pledged to alter radically. The

easiest way to do this was to increase the number of Frauenschulen,

which constituted the separate branch of senior schooling devoted to

intensive domestic science education, and to integrate them fully

into the senior school system; this would enhance their status

in relation to the academic senior schools, and would facilitate

a degree of uniformity which had been lacking because of the

differences in the development of the Frauenschule in the separate

I,änderl.

In the Nazis' first few years of power, much was achieved in

terms of upgrading the standard and status of the Frauenschule. One -

year courses were provided to give a general education to girls who

were leaving senior school before taking the Abitur (university

qualifying examination), while three -year courses were designed

to train girls for a variety of occupations particularly suitable for

women and not requiring a university degree; these included teaching

in primary, technical, art and music schools, youth leadership, and

the obvious careers directly connected with domestic science. From

Easter 1935 the three -year courses included, besides their normal

1. Homeyer, op. cit., p. Aló.

"Bekanntmachung von 3.7.35 ", Amtsblatt des Bayerischen Staats-

ministerium für Unterricht und Kultus, no. IX 27 409, p. 211.
 235.

theoretical and practical training in domestic science, subjects

specifically geared to the Nazi Weltanschauung: racial "science ",

nordic culture, the history of the German peasantry and the

development of National Socialism were compulsory for all1. The

rationalisation of the Frauenschule courses was, as it turned out,

only an interim measure; the final aim was to incorporate them fully

into the girls' senior school system. This was finally achieved when

the entire system was reformed, by an order published in January 1938.

Given the Nazis' outspoken opposition to the entire education

system of the post -war years, it might have been expected that they

would concentrate on framing and effecting reforms to suit their

purposes as quickly as possible after taking power; if the

consolidation of _- -olitical power, the alleviating of economic problems

and rearmament were the top priorities, the education of the young

was nevertheless a vital area for a regime which would not tolerate

dissidence. From 1933 -37, however, the Government contented itself

with a large number of piecemeal measures designed to modify the

existing system immediately, until their comprehensive reform had

been fully worked out. Several of the interim measures reflected the

Nazi view that education should prepare German girls for their role

as wives and '.-others. For example, among' the qualifications girls

required for admission to a Prussian teacher -training college, as

announced in January 1935, was evidence of proficiency in domestic

science, needlework, sport and music2. For the senior schools, it

was decreed at Easter 1935 that the time -table for each class must

1. "Ziel und Aufgaben der 3- jghrigen Frauenschule ", DhAd, 1934, no.
8, P. 337.

2. "Bessere Berufsaussichten far Volksschullehrer ", VB, 4 January,

1935.
 236.

include two hours of needlework every week. This was to be at the

expense of one hour each of English and mathematics, or French, if

mathematics had already been reduced by an hour to accommodate

biology'. With the Nazis' obsession about all matters of race and

heredity, it is not surprising that biology was made compulsory for

all school -children. As Friederike Matthias, the national

spokeswoman on girls' senior schooling, put it: "There is an

obvious need for a basic knowledge of biology in girls' senior schools,

for the cultivation, development and preservation of our race "2.

Fräulein Matthias was also of the opinion that the need to

include more gymnastics, biology, needlework and German in the girls'

curriculum would mean a corresponding reduction in the time given to

science, mathematics and foreign languages3. But by October 1935

Rust obviously felt that such a development was - however desirable -

not practicable, since he announced that the increased demands of

academic work in the higher grades of girls' senior schools meant

that in future there would be no room for homecraft in their time- table.

To compensate for this volte -face, Rust added that it was still felt

that no girl should leave a senior school without knowledge of, and

proficiency in, basic domestic science.. Therefore the family of a

girl in this position, especially the mother, should - as he claimed

had been the case in former times - educate the daughter systematically

in all important household tasks. This was the only apparent

1. "Nadelarbeitsunterricht in Lyzeen ", DWEuV 1935, no. 198, 3 April,

1935, p.. 143.

2. Friederike Matthias, "Grundsätzliches zur Reform der höheren

Mädchenschule ", Reber- Gruber, op. cit., p. 30.

3. Ibid.
 237.

alternative to keeping girls at school for an extra year - to be

devoted to domestic science - which would be contrary to the Nazi

desire to take every chance to encourage early marriage and

motherhood. Rust claimed that academically gifted pupils should have

no difficulty in coping with household instruction in addition to

their normal school work, and that any problems which might arise

could be solved by co- operation between parents and school. To

ensure compliance with his order, he ordered that from Easter 1937

girls should be admitted to the upper classes of senior schools only

if they could provide evidence of familiarity with the simplest

household tasks

From the start, the Nazi Government had felt that the

precondition of effective reform was the elimination from the senior

schools of those they considered unsuited to an academic education.

Already before 1933 there had been talk of limiting entry to senior

schools as well as universities2, and the Nazis had included the

senior schools in their law of 25 April, 1933, to combat the

Hochschulinflation3. As they had succeeded in reducing student numbers

- further than they wished, in the event - so they also achieved a

reduction in the number of senior school pupils, by a number of tactics.

The low -tear -time birth -rate continued, of course, to affect senior

school numbers until 1937, and was a major factor in the drop in the

senior school population by 100,000 in the years 1931 -34, out of a

1. "Aufnahme in die wissenschaftlichen Oberstufen der höheren Mäd-

chenanstalten", DWEuV 1935, no. 582, 11 October, 1935: p. 478.

2. Christoph F(lhr, op. cit., pp. 28 -29.

3. "Gesetz gegen die i?berft{llung deutscher Schulen und Hochschulen ",

RGB, 1933 I, 25 April, 1933, p. 225.
 238.
1
total of over three- quarters of a million in 1931 The failure of

the birth-rate in the post -war years to match the pre -war figures com-

pounded this.

At first, however, the losses were sustained equally by both

sexes, so that the girls' share remained around 37% in the first

half of the decade. Then the girls sustained a slight loss

percentually, to leave them with a share of 34.5i4 in 11382. The

reason was the all -out campaign launched by the Nazis against private

schools, particularly the Roman Catholic schools of Bavaria, which

challenged the Government's authority in the vital area of educating

the young3. Certainly, the boys' private schools suffered from

this campaign, but the numbers involved were much less significant

since there had always been far more private schools for girls. In

the State senior schools girls' representation had, by 1938, returned

to as high a point as it had achieved in 1931 and 1932, after a

slight fluctuation in the middle of the decade, while their absolute

numbers, also, were higher than they had been since 19324.

The slightly more favourable position of girls in senior schools

in relation to boys in 1938 was the direct result of an order issued

late in 1936 which shortened boys' senior schooling by one year,

because of "the operation of the Four Year Plan as well as the

1. Conclusions drawn from figures in Deutsche Schulerziehunp, 1940,

p. 117.

2. Ibid.

3. A brief account of this campaign is to be found in Filers, op. cit.,

PP. 85 -97.

4. Deutsche Schulerziehung, loc. cit.

 239.

recruitment needs of the army"1. The withdrawal of some 20,000

boys at the end of their twelfth school year, instead of at the end

of the thirteenth, in 1937 and 1938 had a small, but noticeable,

effect on girls' share in the senior schools2, and created an

anomalous situation where for almost two years girls were actually

receiving more education, of a kind at times designated unsuitable

for them, than were boys. Rust was aware of the implicit contradiction

here, and was quick to point out that this measure was merely a

temporary expedient which would have to suffice until the promised

thoroughgoing reform of the senior schools was prepared3.

The temporary nature of this arrangement was underlined by an

announcement made by Trude Bürkner in February 1937, to the effect that

a reform of the school system was imminent which would relieve girls

of the obligation to undergo the kind of education to which they

were not suited. This did not mean, she emphasised, that girls'

education would be reduced to the notorious "3 K's ", as foreigners

claimed; the Government was well aware that that would be totally

insufficient. The schools were rather to prepare girls to be fitting

comrades for their future husbands, by giving them some training in

politics, economics and culture4. In other words, the most important

element in girls' schooling, as in boys', was to be instruction in the

National Socialist view of nationally significant issues, and, indeed,

of life as a whole.

1. IfZ, MA 387, frame 725473, letter from Hess to the SS leadership,

12 December, 1936.

2. Deutsche Schulerziehung, loc. cit.

3. BA, R431I/938b, report from Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, no. 474, 19

April, 1937.

4. "Die Erziehung der Mádchen im BD ", FZ, 20 February, 1937.

 240.

At last, on 29 January, 1938, Rust published his Neuordnunp

des h8heren Schulwesens, the reform of the senior schools. In it,

the first point of substance was: "For important reasons of

population policy I have shortened the nine -year period of senior

schooling to eight years"". This, then, formalised the provision

already made for reducing boys' schooling, and at last brought girls

into line with it, although they did not have military service to

perform. A substitute was, however, quickly produced, in the form of

G8ring's project of a year of compulsory service on the land or in

domestic work for girls seeking employment for the first time, from

March 19382.

The Government's order of priorities was thus made perfectly

clear: while the desire to encourage early marriage, to promote

population growth, was rivalled by the urgent need for cheap labour

on the land and in domestic service, these two aims could be largely

reconciled by relegating education to third place. Naturally, it was

denied that this was what was happening: enshrined in Rust's act was

the remark that the shortening of schooling must not result in a

lowering of standards, and that the Abitur, in its traditional form,

would remain the goal of senior schooling. There was also the

warning that those who were unable or unwilling to meet the new

requirements would have to be removed from the senior schools. The new

provisions were not felt to be too harsh, since, it was stressed, in

the Nazi State the school was only one branch of the educational system3;

1. "Neuordnung des h8heren Schulwesens ", DWEuV 1938, 29 January, 1938,

p. 46.

2. This has been discussed in Chapter 3, pp. 168 -70.

3. DWEuV, op. cit., pp 46, 48.

 241.

in the case of girls, the other branches were the BdM and the Labour

Servicel. These agencies could work in harmony, it was felt, since they

were all ultimately under the same leadership, all working in

complementary ways towards the same goals.

In the new plan for the senior schools the eight -year course

was to be a unified whole. Therefore the so- called "mittlere Reife",

an intermediate certificate instituted before the First World War and

obtainable by those wishing to leave with a qualification after seven

years, was to lapse. The senior pupils were to continue to be

scrutinised closely, with a view to eliminating those who had not the

ability to make a success of the full course. It was stressed that in

structure and aims, schools for boys and schools for girls were to

be the same2. But the plans for the curricula for the senior schools,

which accompanied the new order, showed that in content the education

given to the two sexes was to differ considerably, chiefly to the

effect of weakening the academic constitution of the girls' time- tables.

This was, of course, only what had been promised, to a greater or

lesser degree since 1933.

Girls' education, stressed Rust, should not be merely a poor

imitation of boys', which was what post -war developments had made it.

The Nazi theory of the separate functions of the sexes meant that

"the natural difference between the sexes makes itself apparent even

in childhood...so that the schooling of girls to an awareness of their

responsibility to the nation and the State must develop from its own

special roots "3. The result was that the complicated and cumbersome

1. Grete Brenner, "Fragen der höheren P;Rdchenbildung in Deutschland ",

FK, April 1939, p. 6.

2. Ibid.

3. DWEuV, op. cit., p. 51.

 242.

multiform system of schooling, with its variations in the separate

States, was dismantled, and a national senior school structure

established in which there was a basic type of girls' school which

was markedly different from the corresponding basic type of boys'

school.

After four years at the Volksschule (elementary school) - or

three for talented pupils, to achieve a further shortening of

schooling if possible - boys proceeded to the first five years of the

senior school, which were the same for all; they then had the choice

of languages or science as their speciality for the last three years,

which meant that there was more time for concentration on the chosen

field, but that there was also still some instruction in the other.

Biology was not included in the scientific option since it was

already compulsory. There was, naturally, a strong emphasis also on

German and History, but it remained possible for boys to study the

classics in an institution which continued to be called the Gymnasium.

True to their antipathy to the influence of a foreign culture, the

Nazis made it plain that this form of senior school was to cater only

for a small minority of the school populationl.

The girls followed the same pattern as the boys, with three

or four Volksschule years followed by five general senior school years,

before specialisation in one of two courses. In the general years, the

girls' schooling was substantially the same as the boys', with one

significant exception: four hours of Latin each week in the third,

fourth and fifth years of the boys' schools were matched by compulsory

needlework and a little extra music for the girls. With Latin still

a requirement for some university courses, this omission in the girls'

curriculum could work to their disadvantage at the higher levels of

1. Ibid.
 243.

education. The decisive difference between boys' and girls'

schooling came, however, in the last three years. The two options

open to the girls were the language stream and the homecraft

stream, so- called because the difference between them was that in

the former no domestic science, besides needlework, was taught, while

in the latter there was compulsory English for two hours a w eek,

but the chance to learn no other foreign language. More positively,

the language course allowed girls to choose two foreign languages -

one of which might be Latin - in addition to compulsory English, while

the domestic science course gave instruction in all areas of activity

involving nursing, social work, work with young children, and

household tasks. Both streams included instruction in science and

mathematics to an extent that was greater than that provided for boys

in the language stream, but significantly smaller than that for boys

specialising in science in the boys' schools1. This meant that no

provision was made in the girls' schools for those who wished to

specialise in science and mathematics, which would again put them

at an immediate disadvantage in the universities. This measure had

doubtless been attractive at a time - when reform of senior schooling

was first projected - when there was graduate unemployment; but by

the time it was promulgated, even before it became effective, it was

out -of -date and potentially disastrous.

The homecraft course was hailed as an educational form which

would be the only one of its kind in the world. It was made clear

that it was not intended for "less gifted" pupils who were unable to

cope with the academic course, since its scope was very wide and would

make considerable demands on the participants. Not only were the girls

1. Ibid., pp. 54-56.

 244.

to receive instruction in the theoretical aspects of everything that

"the State must expect from the National Socialist woman in the family

and in the community "; there was also to be a strong element of

practical work performed outside the school, in créches and kindergartens,

on farms and in families. With this stream an integral part of the

girls' senior school system, there was no longer the need for the

separate institution of the Frauenschule, but the name was to be

retained for this course as a matter of convenience. The wide choice

of occupations for which this course would qualify girls was emphasised,

the only ones not included being those for which a further period of

study in a university or college was requiredl.

Even if the curricula proposed for girls can be seen to contain

features disadvantageous to girls aiming to proceed to higher education,

the formalising of the structure of the girls' schools signified

official recognition of the need to provide courses with a high

academic content for a considerable number of girls, and not just for

a minority of unusual cases. This was precisely what the hard- liners

in the Party had hoped to eliminate, on ideological grounds, but which

had proved necessary in the light of the country's need for skilled

personnel in all branches of administration, welfare and professional

life.

As usual, the new measure was accompanied by explanations and

justifications in the press. The V231kischer Beobachter reported in

March 1938 that many people were asking the question: "Why prepare

girls for a career which they will just give up when they marry ?"

Although the Party had done much to encourage this old- fashioned idea,

its official newspaper now -remarked that neither parents nor children

seemed to have given any thought to the possibility that some girls

1. Grete Brenner, op. cit., pp. 6 -7.

 245.

would not marry. It was not, stressed the TJ ölkischer Beobachter,

that girls should fail to prepare themselves for the tasks they

would face if they did become wives and mothers; now, however, the

old bourgeois days were past when girls were expected to sit at home

waiting for a husband. The need was for girls who, whether they

were to marry or not, were prepared to play their part in the service

of their country, namely by training for an occupation, especially

in those areas where the growing shortage of labour was most acute1.

Similar propaganda appeared in girls' and women's magazines, but it

was obviously felt that exhortation would not be sufficient to

prevent a number of girls from choosing- to remain idle when they

left school instead of training for an occupation: for this reason,

the year of compulsory domestic or farm service, introduced by Gering

in February 1938, was at first restricted to those girls who had

never been employed, while signing on at an Employment Exchange

2
became compulsory for all school-leavers . But those girls

proceeding to courses in higher education were exempt from these

provisions, since intending students were obliged to perform Labour

Service before commencing their studies, and they were not, in any

case, proposing to remain idle.

One of the points made firmly in the Neuordnung des höheren

Schulwesens was that "coeducation contradicts the National Socialist

conception of education "3. With attempts at progress towards a

coeducational system of senior schooling consistently frustrated before

1. "Warum immer neue Forderungen an die Madel?", VB, 10 March, 1938.

2. "Einführung des weiblichen Pflichtjahrs ", VB, 22 February, 1938.

See above, Chapter 3, p. 170.

3. DWEuV, op. cit., p. 46.

 246.

the Machtübernahme, it must have been expected that an unequivocal

policy of segregation would be enforced after it, given the strength

of Nazi opposition to coeducation as a logical part of the

Party's belief that the sexes were different in nature and had

separate functions to perform. Certainly, some of the States showed

willingness to put segregationist theories into practice: Saxony

passed a law on 9 October, 1933, which stated that, other than in

exceptional cases, girls must attend only girls' schools'.

The Prussian Ministry of Education followed suit on 12 February,

1934, with an order that

"as a matter of principle girls are not to be ahwitted

to boys' schools if there is in the district a middle
school or a girls' senior school at which girls can receive
an education more suited to their nature ".

Exceptions to this harsh ruling, which implied that middle schooling

was adequate for the needs of the female sex, required the personal

permission of the Minister; but it was at least conceded that girls

already attending boys' schools should be allowed to complete their

education unaffected by the new order2. The Minister evidently

realised that it would be far easier to allow this than to try to

force the 12,872 girls attending boys' schools in Prussia to change.

These girls constituted almost 5j of all pupils in boys' schools,

and about 5% of all girls receiving senior schooling, so that while

their numbers were relatively small, they were by no means negligible3.

1. "Aufhebung der Gesetze über die Gemeinschaftserziehung an höheren

Schulen (usw)", Sachsisches Gesetzblatt, 1933, order of 9 October,
1933, pp. 175 -76.

2. "Erlass des Ministers für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Volksbildung

vom 12.2.1934 ", DMd, 15 May, 1934, p. 144.

3. Report in Mad, 15 February, 1934, p. 48.

 247.

It should, however, have been an easy matter for a totalitarian

Government to prevent girls from being admitted to boys' schools in

the future.

But in spite of the Government's open opposition to coeducation,

especially at the senior level of schooling, and its measures

designed to eliminate it, it continued throughout the 1930s. The

35,628 girls at boys' senior schools throughout the country in 1931

constituted 6.3% of the pupils at boys' schools. Although their

actual numbers declined to 31,102 in 1935, their percentual share

in fact rose fractionally, to 6.4%; and two years later, in 1937, an

increased absolute number of 33,752 gave them a share of 6.8'L,

which, if only a marginal rise, was a rise nevertheless1. Therefore

it is clear that attendance by girls at boys' senior schools was

not being phased out in the way envisaged by the Government, and that,

contrary to Rust's orders - which applied to the whole of Germany

once he became Reich Minister of Education in 1934 - girls were

continuing to be admitted to these schools.

In the 1938 reform, then, the Government was reiterating

opposition to coeducation which had already been expressed on

several occasions, but which had not been backed up by effective

action. The Neuordnung des höheren Schulwesens did, however, concede

that there might still occasionally be special circumstances in which

girls could be admitted to boys' schools, although on no account

were boys to attend girls' senior schools2. The number of boys

1. Deutsche Schulerziehung, loc. cit.

2. Dti"dEu.V, loc. cit.

 248.

likely to be affected by this ruling was, in fact, minimal: in 1931

there were 849, constituting the tiny fraction of 0.3% of the total

number of pupils in girls' senior schools; in 1937, the numbers had

in fact risen to 1313 and the proportion to 0.6%, but as such the

problem remained insignificanti. In the order it was stressed that

the differences between the two sexes necessitated forms of schooling

in which the emphases would be different, with the stipulation that

in those cases where girls did attend boys' schools provision should

be made for their "special needs ", which were not described2. This

proviso was enlarged six months later in another measure which laid

down that separate toilet facilities and a needlework room were to

be made available for girls in those boys' schools where there was

consistently a large number of girls3. Such a provision in an

official order was an admission that coeducation had not been, and was

not being, stamped out, although in theory it was anathema. An order

of 18 January, 1939, even urged that, if there was a large enough

number of girls at a boys' school, a domestic science class should be

formed, so that attendance at a boys' senior school would not deprive

them of some elements of a "womanly" education4.

One reason for girls, or their parents, flying in the face

of stated Government policy here was undoubtedly that there was a

growing fear before 1938 that even talented girls would be handicapped

1. Deutsche Schulerziehung, loc. cit.

2. D!filEuV, loc. cit.

3. "Mad.chen an Jungenschulen", DWEuV 1938, 27 August, 1938, no. 477,

pp. 429-30.

4. "Mádchen an Jungenschulen ", DWEuV 1939, 18 January, 1939, no. 46,

pp. 56 -57.
 249.

by attending girls' schools in which, it had been predicted, the

academic content would be reduced in favour of domestic science.

And after the publication of the 1938 reform, it was clear that girls

would have a better chance of achieving university entrance in the

boys' schools, which provided more teaching of science and Latin

than the girls' schools. In order to try to block one loophole,

the Government ordered in August 1938 that girls in the lower grades

of boys' schools should not be given Latin lessons, in line with the

absence of Latin in the first five years at girls' schools. This

meant that girls hoping to proceed to the higher grades of the boys'

schools would have to make up what they had missed in the way of

Latin classes by means of private tuitionl. But the exigencies of war

rendered the provision of any special teaching for girls at boys'

schools impracticable, and the announcement abolishing this in

January 1940 also stated that girls were to be allowed to study

Latin on the sane terms as boys, and to be educated in classes with

boys in all subjects except sport2.

It appears, then, that in spite of the fact that segregation

of the sexes was a firm tenet of Nazi policy and although the Nazis

were indisputably in control of the Government of Germany from 1933,

a measure of coeducation continued throughout the 1930s, to be

finally accepted as necessary in war-time. There can be little

doubt that the war -time expedients were envisaged as being purely

1. DWEuV 1938, loc. cit.

2. "Sonderunterricht für MAdchen, die Oberschulen für Jungén besuchen,

DVEuV 1940, 12 January, 1940, no. 53, p 76.
 250.

temporary, but what is amazing is that coeducation had not been

stamped out long before the war. After all, the Nazis did not have

to face the problems of the 1920s, when the political parties were

deeply split on this issue, and when there was no central agency for

the administration of education. In addition, large -scale dismissals

of teachers and administrators for political reasonsI meant that much

potential opposition to Nazi policies at the local level was removed

at the start. Therefore it must be concluded that, in spite of the

constant reiteration of their complete opposition to coeducation, the

Nazis themselves failed to enforce their policy in such a way that it

was effective. The result was a continuation of the stalemate of the

1920s, which prevented progress towards a system in which schools were

open to boys and girls equally. Thus, if a number of girls did

attend boys' senior schools, this did not alter the fact that these

remained schools which were primarily intended for boys, and that

there were other institutions intended specifically for girls.

The Neuordnung des h8heren Schulwesens was scheduled to take

effect from the autumn of 1938, although it was accepted that there

would have to be at least a short transition period. This meant that

in the first year some allowances, and the provision of extra tuition

in certain subjects, if necessary, would be made for the senior pupils,

who would be the most affected by the change- over2. But already

during this first year, even before Germany was at war, it was clear

that the new system would present difficulties. The propagation of

the homecraft stream in the girls' schools was not consistent with the

1. This is discussed in Chapter 5.

2. _
^
"Neuordnung des h8heren Schulwesens ", D =fEuV 1938, 29 January, 1938,
P. 47
 251.

the need to encourage more girls to aim for university study, which

was apparent even before 1938. The result was that as early as

January 1939 Rust issued an order to the effect that girls who were

awarded the certificate of the homecraft stream and who wished to

proceed to university would have to sit a further examination in

history, mathematics, physics and two languages to be eligible for

admissionl.

This topsy -turvy arrangement was the outcome of the stubborn

insistence of the Minister of Education, and of Party ideologues

who did not have to operate practical policies, that girls should

be encouraged to choose a "womanly" education instead of an academic

one, even when events were already proving them wrong. The final

contortion was to come in August 1939, when it was ordered that, as

from Easter 1941, the certificate of the domestic science course would

entitle girls to enter university in the same way as the certificate

of the language course, although the farmer's academic content was

significantly weaker than the latter's2. Given this contradictory

and capricious attitude by the Government to girls' education, and

also, by implication, to the standards of university study, it is

hardly surprising that there were complaints voiced in 1942 about

irresponsible behaviour on the part of many girl students, since the

new entrance requirements !meant that many would be very ill -equipped

indeed to cope with academic study which had been designed to cater for

students who had been far more adequately prepared for it. This was a

very serious state of affairs indeed at a time when girls were forming

1. "Berechtigung der Reifezeugnisse der Oberschule für Madchen,

hauswirtschaftliche Form", DV1EuV 1939, 24 January, 1939, no. 77, p. 80.

2. "Berechtigung der Reifezeugnisse der Oberschule für Mädchen,

hauswirtschaftliche Form", DWEuV 1939, 23 August, 1939, no. 467,
P. 463.
 252.

a high proportion of the student bodyl.

This, then, was the Nazi answer to the "mistaken development"

of education during the Weimar years. Their stated aim at the start

had been "to reduce the number of senior pupils and students to

the extent that basic education is afforded and the needs of the

professions are satisfied "2. Certainly, it had been sensible, even

necessary - doctrinal reasons apart - to proceed in the matter of

restricting or delaying university entrance at a time of severe graduate

unemployment, a policy advocated by the last democratic Governments

but, because of their inherent difficulties, unimplemented by them.

It was probably a combination of ideological absurdity, ¿iven the

Party's basic anti -intellectualism, and administrative inefficiency,

given the mediocrity of its leading figures, that led to this policy's

being pushed far beyond the desirable limit until it was realised that

the process would have to be not only halted but even reversed.

As far as girls' education was concerned, it was desirable that

more attention should indeed be paid to domestic science, which was

too often despised in intellectual circles and given no place in the

academic senior schools. But the switch from overemphasising academic

talents to overemphasising "womanly" education and the virtues of

motherhood was a grotesque overcompensation, and bore no relation 41

to the actual needs of the German economy as the 1930s wore on, so

that there was to be a consistent shortage of qualified personnel to

the end of the decade and, to the nation's disadvantage, during the

war years. This was still true after the volte -face in autumn 1936,

1. IfZ, I4A
441/6, frame 2- 757141, op. cit.

2. "Rechtsentwicklung ", Jahrbuch des Deutschen Rechts, 1934, p. 24.

 253.

when official pronouncements began to stress the importance

of encouraging academically talented girls to go to university,

because even at this time the school system was being prepared to

divert girls from academic study.

Even so, Hitler must have been greatly removed from reality

to be able to say, in 1942, that "girls...have received education in

accordance with the principles of National Socialism "1. Certainly,

girls had been constantly bombarded with Nazi propaganda about the

role of women in society. But this could not change the situation

that the Nazis themselves created. For, in the end, it was their own

policies, the expansionist ones which were inevitably given precedence

over the enforcement of the Party's educational and social policies

with regard to women, which rendered impossible the already difficult

task of implementing points of doctrine once considered immutable.

1. Hitler's Table Talk 1941 -44, London, 1953, no. 223, 20 iay, 1942
(Midday), p. 491.
 254-
CHAPTER FIVE1

Women and the Professions

Introduction

There is probably no area which has proved to be a more

sensitive indicator of a society's attitude to the status of

women than the professions - that is, those occupations for whose

exercise a degree or a diploma is required. The first prerequisite

for admission to the professions is, of course, the availability of

opportunities for higher education; thus, prospects for women in

the professions in Germany after the Great War should have been

bright, with girls admitted to every German university before the

war and the rapidly increasing number of girl students in the 1920s.

But, at the same time, women had been admitted to full membership of

the civil service and the legal and medical professions, as well as

to university lectureships, only after the war; and married women

had then been admitted to professional positions for the first time.

The tradition of male dominance in the professions and prejudice

against women achieving positions of responsibility and influence

persisted throughout the 1920s into the 1930s, while the straitened

economic situation which dogged Germany during the Weimar years

restricted the room for manoeuvre available to those who would have

been pleased to promote the interests of the extremely small minority

of women who aspired to a professional career. The depression also

gave the National Socialists the excuse to try to put theory into

practice by circumscribing the activities of professional women, as of

employed women as a whole. But, again similar to the situation in the

1. An earlier draft of this chapter was published as: Jill McIntyre,

"Women and the Professions in Germany, 1930-1940 ", Anthony
Nicholls and Erich Matthias (ed.), German Democracy and the Triumph
of itler, London, 1971, pp. 175 -213.
H___
 255.

employment market generally, the theory soon proved impractical,

and the policies which had priority in the Nazi State necessitated

warm encouragment to women to enter professional occupations.

Some progress was, however, made in the 1920s, including

the achievement of equal pay for women in the public service - whether

as teachers, lawyers, doctors, lecturers or civil servants - as a

result of Article 128 of the Weimar Constitution. This was in line

with practice after the war in the majority of European countries

although it was not until 1955 that equal pay for women in the

civil service and the teaching profession was introduced in Great

Britain2. But the obstacles to full acceptance of women in the

professions remained formidable. Speaking of the Federal Republic

in the early 1960s, one campaigner of the 1920s could still complain

of prejudice against the employment of women on university staffs and

as senior civil servants3. And an official report published in 1961

asserted:

"That up to now women have had so small a share in the

qualified professions is in singular contrast to the fact
that they have exactly the same right to high-school and
university education as men, and that the percentage of
girl students is high.... Observations indicate that, in
spite of the legally-embedded equality of rights, women
in professional employment have in no way the same chances as
men "4.

1. Vera Douie (ed.), The Professional Position of Women: a World

Survey immediately preceding World War II, London, 1947, pp.
20 -38.

2. Keesing's ContemjDorary Archives, vol. X, 1955-56, "Equal Pay for

Women in the Non-industrial Civil Service and for Women Teachers ",
25 January, 1955, p. 14165.

30 Marie-Elisabeth Luders, "Aus der Frauenarbeit des

1919 -33 ", Ernst Deuerlein (ed.), Der Reichstag. Aufsätze
Protokolle und Darstellungen zur Geschichte der parlamentischen
Vertretung des deutschen Volkes, 1871 -1933 ", Bonn, 1963, 113.

4. "The Position of Women ", Germany Reports (Bundesrepublik publication),

Bonn, 1961, p. 679.
 256.

These words might well have been written thirty years earlier, to

describe the situation that obtained in the Germany of the Weimar

Republic, and to imply the disillusionment felt by those who had

imagined that legal equality would necessarily bring a striking

degree of progress in its train°

A. Progress and Pre,iudiee in the Weimar Republic

There were two main strands in the development of women's

position in the professions after the Great War. The first

concerned the female sex as a whole, and was conditioned by factors

such as the relatively recent admission of women to the universities,

the losses sustained by men during the war1, and general attitudes

to the equality of opportunity for women written into the Weimar

Constitution. The other element was the more specific one of the

employment of married women, which became a contentious issue across

the occupational spectrum after the war2, but nowhere more so than

in the professions. Those who had opposed the admission of women

to the professions on the grounds that they were neither intellectually

nor physically suited to such demanding and responsible work , were

reluctantly prepared in the 1920s to accept the appointment of a select

number of dedicated career-women - who were by definition unmarried .

to meet the demands of the feminist lobby. But there remained many

1. For example, on 17 June, 1918, The Times reported that "during the
war 14,722 German teachers have been killed or are missing".

2. This is discussed in Chapter 3, pp. 126 -31.

3. Kirchhoff, loc. cit.

Russell, loc. cito

Report by Maximilian Harden in Die Zukunft, 24 August, 1918, pp.

224-32.
 257.

men, and also women, who were opposed in principle to the employment

of married women in professional positions, not least because of the

decline in the birth rate after the war. Studies of the birth rate

among married women graduates which appeared during the 1920s

provided little consolation for those who supported unconditionally

a woman2s right to work: it was shown that, on average, the

families of women in professional positions were marginally larger

than those of men in similar jobs, but that both these groups had

a lower birth rate than any other section of the community1. The

dropping birth rate, therefore, continued to be used as ammunition

against the professional Doppelverdiener.

While the campaign against the married woman in a professional

job gathered increasing momentum, as positions became ever more

scarce in the later 1920s, it seemed as if the position of women

generally in the professions was becoming more secure. The early

governments of the Republic, and Hermann Miller's government in

1928 -30, were generally well- disposed towards the cause of women's

advancement, although those of the more economically stable middle

years, when the Social Democrats were out of office and the Centre

Party was dominant, were not inclined to accelerate the progress

initially made. Still, if there was no woman Cabinet Minister in

Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, the same was true of other

European countries, with the exceptions of Britain and the Soviet

Union. And women were appointed to senior positions at both the

national and Land level2. These were, of course, outstanding

exceptions, and while a number of other women were appointed to minor

1. Agnes Martens -Edelmann, "Frauenstudium, Ehe und Mutterschaft ", Die

Frau, November 1936, pp. 84-89.

2. The detail of this is given in Chapter 1, pp. 23 -24.

 258.

official positions, it is important to emphasise that there was

only ever a tiny handful at the top. Nevertheless, given the barriers

of prejudice which women had to face in winning full admission to

professional positions, the steady progress achieved in the 1920s,

particularly in teaching and medicine - no doubt partly because of

male casualties in the war - was considered reasonable by the moderate

feminists, even if it was deemed totally inadequate by the radical

feminists and excessive by conservatives.

With the removal of all obstacles to the practice of medicine

by women, they became active in all areas of the profession after

1918, in ever- increasing numbers1. By May 1927 there were 1,757

women doctors who constituted 4% of the total number, and by the

end of 1930 the figures had risen to 2,648 and 5.6%2. At the same

time, the number of women teachers increased, as also did their

proportion to men in the profession: in the primary schools their

share rose to 25% in 1927, compared with the pre-war figure of 21%;

in the middle schools the rise was from 32% to 50%; and in the girls'

senior schools they continued to constitute about three -quarters of

the total number3. Women were also admitted to the staffs of

universities and colleges, and in the summer of 1927 there were thirty -

one women lecturers in the universities, who formed the tiny proportion

of 0.0 of the total number4. The increasing number of girl students

1. Mathilde Kelchner, Die Frau und der weibliche Arzt, Leipzig, 1934,
p. 14.

2. St.J.: 1928, p. 486; 1931, P. 406.

3. Ibid.: 1914, Pp. 322 -24; 1924/25, PP. 355 -57.

4. Ibid., 1928, p. 512.

 259.

throughout the 1920s, however, suggested that there would be more

women appointed to university lectureships in the relatively

near future. Probably the biggest breakthrough for women in the

professions came, however, in October 1922, when three women were

admitted as junior barristers to a Berlin court, thus entering one

of the most sacrosanct of male preserves. But although their numbers

had increased to twenty-five by September 1930, women made little

progress beyond the lower levels of the legal professionl.

Like their male colleagues, professional women joined together

in organisations. Some became members of groups which had male

members, such as the Institut far Soziale Arbeit,, but the large number

of professional organisations exclusively for women testifies to an

alignment chiefly by sex, and therefore to the maintenance of a degree

of solidarity among the feminists who had campaigned before the war

for the admission of women without discrimination to the professions,

This point was reinforced by the association of the women's

professional organisations with the other women's clubs - whether of

a vocational, a social or a charitable nature - in the annual Women's

Congress2.

The strongest and most senior of the women's professional groups

was the Allgemeiner Deutscher Lehrerinnenverein (General Union of

German Women Teachers), which had been founded by Helene Lange in 1890.

By 1930, it had more than 40,000 members, from a variety of localities,

denominations and types of school3. Just as the majority of the pre -war

1. "10 Jahre weibliche Richter ", Die Frau, January 1933, p. 249.

2. BA, Nachlass Katharina von Kardorff, no. 28, p. 9, "Der XI. Frauen -
congress in Berlin, 17.- 22.6.1929: Ehrenbeirat der Verbände ".

3. Puckett, op. cit., p. 178.

 260.

women's organisations had become corporate members of the BDF, so

the organisations of women doctors, teachers, civil servants,

lecturers and students had their own federation, or " Dachorganisation",

namely the Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund1. There were also separate

groups which remained outside this combine, chiefly the denominational

teaching associations like the Verein Deutscher Evangelischer

Lehrerinnen2, and the Verein katholischer Lehrerinnen3. The identity

of the women's professional organisations was often asserted in the

publication of an independent journal; for example, the magazine

of the women doctors, Die Arztin, paralleled the men's Der Arzt4. A

late -comer to the field of women's professional groups was the

Vereinigung Deutscher Hochschuldozentinnen, founded in 1927 by

Professor Rhoda Erdmann, for the small but growing number of women

lecturers in universities and colleges5.

But if progress was being made and if professional women were

demonstrating their new self -assurance in their organisational

activity, there was still much left to be desired, as a DVP member,

Martha Schwarz, pointed out in 1932. In a report on women civil

servants in the Prussian Ministry of Education in 1931 - choosing the

area in which women were professionally best represented and the Land

"which has been governed for over seven years by the parties

allegedly well- disposed towards women's interests, the SPD and the

1. Clifford Kirkpatrick, Woman in Nazi Germany, London, 1939, p. 50.

2. BA, R2/1291, letter from the committee of the VDEL to the Reich
Minister of Finance, 7 June, 1923.

3. Eilers, op. cit., p. 76n.

4. Report in FiS, May 1929, p. 4.

5. "Die deutsche Frau in Lehre und Forschung ", FK, February 1938, p. 3.
 261.

Democrats" - she showed that women were still very under- represented;

of forty-five senior officials in the Ministry, only three were

female. In the local educational authorities of Prussia the story

was much the same, or, in some cases, worse. Martha Schwarz found

it particularly objectionable that only sixty-seven of the 346 heads

of girls' senior schools were women, although she added that women

should be promoted only if they met the necessary requirements.

Equally, she added that it was not her view that large numbers of

women should suddenly be found high -ranking positions. Nevertheless,

the sad truth seemed to be that the left -wing government which had

taken office in Prussia in 1925 had failed to improve on the position

it inherited, in the gradual manner favoured by the moderate

feminists1.

The governments of the Reich and the Lander found themselves

faced with two conflicting demands: Article 128 of the 1919

Constitution stated specifically that

"All citizens without distinction are eligible for public

office in accordance with the laws and according to their
abilities and achievements. All discriminations against
women in the civil service are abolished ".

But, at the same time, there was a desperate need to cut public

spending and, therefore, to reduce the number of civil servants -

whether they were administrators, teachers, doctors or lawyers. The

least painful way to achieve this seemed to be to try to persuade

married women in the public service to resign, and as an emergency

measure - which eventually turned out to be a useful precedent - the

Reich Minister of Finance announced that married women civil servants

1. BA, 84511/64, M. Schwarz, "Frauen in der preussischen Unterrichts-

verwaltung", Frauenrundschau, 11 February, 1932.
 262.

in the postal and transport services would receive a lump -sum

payment if they resigned during the chaotic financial year 1922 -231.

But if the national government had agonised over this decision, some

of the Land governments had no compunction whatsoever in blatantly

ignoring the provisions of Article 128; it was left to the courts to

reverse measures enacted to discriminate against married women

teachers in both Bavaria and Wurttemberg .

Opposition to married women gainfully employed outside the

home concentrated on women in professional jobs for two reasons:

firstly, it was regretted but recognised that many working-class women

were forced to earn -a wage to supplement their husband's income if

the family was to be supported; secondly, it was conceded that many

married women, particularly in agriculture, in the textile trade and

in some clerical jobs, were doing work that would not normally be done

by men, but it was claimed that professional women could easily be

replaced by men, and might well be preventing a suitably -qualified man

from finding a post. In some cases, complaints were made about the

employment of married women by single women who felt that they should

have priority. In June 1923 the committee of the Union of German

Evangelical Women Teachers wrote to the Minister of Finance asking him

to provide a sum of money as severance pay to encourage married women

to retire from the profession since, said their President, many would

do so if they could afford to. She regretted that the provision making

dismissal obligatory on marriage for women teachers had been revoked,

1. BA, R2/1291, letter from the Württemberg Minister of Finance to

the Reich Minister of Finance, 31 March, 1923,

2, Auguste Steiner, "Zur Berufsarbeit der verheirateten Frau ", BF,

February 1933, p. 6.
 263.

and complained that, for one thing, married women could not devote

the necessary energy and attention to their job, and, for another,

that there was hardship among single women who were qualified

teachers but could not find a position while married women worked1.

This was no isolated instance: in March 1923, Christine Teusch,

a Centre Party Reichstag deputy, had asked the Minister of Finance

to authorise the payment of a sum of money to married women who

retired from a professional post; but the Minister had regretfully

refused because, he said, the money was not available2.

Even in difficult times, the goodwill of the more liberal

Reich Governments was not in doubt. As early as 1920, guidelines

were drawn up for regulations to define the status of married women

in the public service, to bring the Civil Code into line with the

Constitution3. By 1929, however, this had still not been achieved4,

and, although he regarded the matter as one of major importance,

Severing - as Reich Minister of the Interior - was obliged to admit

in September 1929 that the majority necessary to pass such a measure

in the Reichstag could not be constructed. Instead, he planned to

incorporate it into his projected comprehensive civil service law5.

1. BA, R2/1291, letter from the committee of the VDEL to the Reich
Minister of Finance, 7 June, 1923.

2. Ibid., letter from the Reich Minister of Finance to Frau Teusch,

May 1923 (exact date not given).

3. Ibid., letter from the Reich Minister of the Interior to the State
Secretary in the Chancellery, 10 July, 1923.

4. Ibid., letter from Severing to the other Reich Ministers et al.,

12 July, 1929.

5. Ibid., letter from Severing to the other Reich Ministers et al.,

21 September, 1929.
 264.

But Müller's Government had demonstrated its good faith by

instructing Hilferding - the Reich Minister of Finance - to make

proposals for increasing the number of places available for women

administrators in the Reich Ministries in his budget plans for 1929.

The aim was to open an avenue to promotion for women clerical workers

who had obtained a qualification which made them eligible for the

higher civil servicel. This measure was duly accepted by the

Reichstag as a part of the 1929 budget2.

But even as the Government was making this demonstration of

goodwill, the economic situation was worsening, and with it prospects

for all aspiring professional people. Already in the autumn of

1929 the Reich Ministries were again searching for ways of reducing

staff, to save money, and were increasingly coming to the conclusion

that this could be most conveniently achieved by offering married

women the financial incentive of severance pay if they resigned

voluntarily3. In the teaching profession, the situation was grim,

with 29,000 qualified teachers without jobs in Prussia alone4, and

by the time the economic crisis hit Germany there were far more

applicants for professional positions of every kind than there were

jobs available5. The outlook continued to grow only blacker in 1930

1. Ibid., letter from Hilferding to the State Secretary in the Chancellery,

19 November, 1928.

2. Ibid., notice issued by section IB of the Reich Ministry of Finance,

undated (? end of March, 1929).

3. Ibid., letter from the Minister of Transport, Dr. Rocholl, to the

German Railways Corporation, 5 October, 1929.

4. Christoph Führ, op. cit., p. 29.

5. Georg Gothein, "Die wirtschaftlichen Aussichten für Industrie und

Mittelstand ", Deutsche Handels -warte, 1929, no. 4, p. 90, found in
BA, Nachlass Gothein, no. 79.
 265.

and 1931, as the Government's need to retrench grew more urgent, and

as the number of students - who would soon join the queue for

professional jobs - rose to record proportionsl. A speaker at the

1932 conference of the Bavarian Union of Women's Associations claimed

that women were being even worse hit by the deteriorating situation than

men2, and indeed in the teaching profession it seemed as if this was

true: while there were 15,000 male candidates waiting for vacancies

among 13,600 male teachers with permanent jobs in Prussia in 1931,

there were as many as 7,500 qualified women teachers waiting for

vacancies among the mere 1,900 permanent female members of school

staffs3.

The deepening of the economic crisis led to an intensification

of the attacks already being made on the Doppelverdiener, especially

in the professions. In response to this tendency, a Government

Commission, appointed in 1931 to investigate ways of solving - or at

least mitigating - the unemployment problem, particularly recommended

a much wider resort to the practice of offering "compensation" to

those professional married women who retired from the public service.

Reporting this, the radical feminist Grete Stoffel observed that

"There does not yet exist a law which entitles or obliges the State or

a private employer to dismiss female civil servants or clerical workers

just because they are married ". But, she predicted pessimistically,

it seemed likely that a measure on these lines would form a part of

the new law being contemplated on the basis of the Commission's report4.

1. See above, Chapter 4, p. 190.

2. Report in BF, July /August 1932, p. 2.

3. Report in BF, February 1932, p. 6.

4. Grete Stoffel, "Die Arbeitslosigkeit und die Frauenarbeit ", FiS,

August /September 1931, p. 5.
 266.

The feminists were convinced that the Government's attitude

towards the employment of women, and particularly women in

professional positions, was at best negative, and probably hostilel.

But the Bruning Government was actually extremely unwilling to

discriminate against any group, including married women, and it was

with reluctance that, at the end of 1931, with the situation still

worsening, it sounded out the Reichstag to find if support could be

secured for a bill which would permit the dismissal of married women

civil servants. The response was positive2. As the Government

prepared its bill, feminists of all shades of opinion began a

campaign to oppose it. Indeed, they had a degree of reason on their

side: the figures that were bandied about - based on the 1925 census -

showed that the furore concerned at most 7,000 out of a total of

3,700,000 employed married women; thus the retirement of even all

married women civil servants would make a negligible contribution to

solving the unemployment problem, even if it provided jobs for a few

more male graduates3.

If the feminists found this gesture by the Government alarming,

they were even more concerned by the way that the campaign against

the Doppelverdiener seemed to be broadening into an attack on the

general position of women in employment, particularly in responsible,

1. BF, July/August 1932,

"Die Lage der Frau in den geistigen Berufen ", __..
p. 2.

2. BA, R451I/64, Lotte Garnich, "Krise und Frauenberufsarbeit ",

Frauenrundschau, 4 February, 1932, pp. 1115 -17.

3. Ibid.

Grete Stoffel, loc. cit.

Maria Hellersberg, "Die Berufsarbeit der Frau ", BF, February 1932,
pp. 1 -2.
 267.

well -paid positions. One example of this was a proposal made in

the Prussian Landtag by the Centre Party - with the support of

leading Catholic women - that employed single as well as married

women should be replaced by men1. Further, the increasing strength

of the National Socialists, evidenced in the Reichstag elections

of 1930, and then 1932, gave rise to fears that the situation could

become very much worse than it seemed already to be. Lida Gustava

Heymann warned that in the Third Reich women would be forced to

revert to their role in Imperial days, which she characterised as

that of child- bearing machine and maidservant of men, with all

political rights revoked2. A more prosaic, but equally grim, picture

was painted by a DVP supporter, who predicted that under the Nazis

women would lose not only their political rights but also the right

to work in the public service. She was able to support her gloomy

forecast with references to Mein Kampf, the Nazi Party Programme, and

speeches by Nazis, including Alfred Rosenberg and Hermann Esser3.

Nazi propaganda indeed justified fears of this nature, but, as

was to become increasingly apparent, Nazi propaganda did not always

represent the Party's ideas faithfully. In fact, the Nazis

recognised that many women were obliged to earn a living, often against

their will4, These, at least - including perhaps some of the 128,000

1. Grete Stoffel, loc. cit.

2. Lida Gustava Heymann, "Nachkriegspsychose", FiS, March 1931, pp. 1-2.

3. BA, op. cit., Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt, "Die Stellung des National-

sozialismus zur Frau ", Frauenrundschau, 6 April, 1932, p. 1169.

4. Alice Rilke, "Die erwerbstatige Frau im Dritten Reich ", NS-Frauen-

buch, Munich, 1934, p. 65.

Angela Meister, "Die deutsche Industriearbeiterin ", Munich University

dissertation, 1938, pp. 26 -27.
 268.

professional women1 - could be lured back into the home by family

allowances and the marriage -loan scheme. But it would be much more

difficult to persuade those women in the professions who looked on

their job as an absorbing career that their true vocation lay within

the sphere of the home and children, to the exclusion of all else.

They would therefore have to be coerced into accepting their "natural

calling", in which they would find true happiness. So ran the theory2.

It was recognised, however, that not all women would marry - something

which was obvious, in view of the fact that there were two million

more women than men in Germany throughout the inter -war period - and

so those who did not would have to find employment in occupations

concerned with women, children and domestic matters. In this way,

they would at least be able to fulfil their maternal instincts at

second hand3. The nation would thus benefit, too, from the best use

of their womanly talents: "Helfen, Heilen, Erziehen" (helping,

healing, training) were women's functions, allotted to her by nature4,

The Nazis, therefore, perhaps unintentionally, implicitly recognised

the need for women in the medical and teaching professions and also in

10 St.D.R., vol. 451, section 3, p. 49.

2. "Die Geschlechter im Dritten Reich ", F`rankische Tageszeitung, 17

April, 1934.

3. Siber, op. cit., pp. 26 -27.

Lydia Gottschewski, Männerbund und Frauenfrage, Munich, 1934, p. 71.

An account of the role played by Paula Siber and Lydia Gottschewski

in the Nazi women's organisation is given in chapter 6.

4. Report in VB, 17 March, 1934.

 269.

skilled social work of all kinds1.

To this extent, there was to be little for the Nazis to

change. The results of the census conducted in May 1933 showed

that half of all professional women were engaged in teaching at

various levels, with another 10% involved in occupations connected

with health and welfare. The other most significant employer of

women in the professional grade was the Ministry of Posts, with

almost 34,000, or more than a quarter of all women in this category.

This group might well be a target for Nazi discriminatory measures;

and there could be little doubt that the Nazis would view with

greatest disfavour the 10,000 women employed as officials at the

national and local level2. In both absolute and relative terms, the

number of married women in this group was snail: a mere 4,000

professional married women in 1933 constituted less than 4% of the

total category; by contrast, more than one -third of all employed

women were married, with the result that almost one -third of all

married women were employed3. Thus, any campaign against this section

of working women could, even at its most effective, have only very

marginal results for the labour market as a whole.

Some of the Nazis' work was, however, done for them before they

came to power, as the reduction in the number of married women in the

professions from up to 7,000 in 1925 to 4,000 in 1933 - the census

1. G. Vogel, Die deutsche Frau. III: im Weltkrieg und im Dritten

Reich, Breslau, 1936, p. 6.

Elfriede Eggener, "Die organische Eingliederung der Frau in den

nationalsozialistischen Staat ", Leipzig University dissertation,
1938, pp. 37 and 47,

2. St.D.R., op. cit., p. 37.

3. Ibid., p. 76.
 270,

coming before Nazi legislation in this matter - shows. Although

it had shown some reluctance to yield to the demand to single out the

Doppelverdiener for dismissal to ease the critical situation in the

civil service and the professions, the Bruning Government at last

followed up the rather tentative moves it had made in this direction

with a bill designed, euphemistically, to define "the legal status

of women civil servants"; it was hardly in the spirit Severing had

envisaged for his projected bill, although, ironically, it bore a

similar title1. Now, in May 1932, Groener, as Reich Minister of

the Interior, introduced a measure which provided that married

women employed in responsible positions by the State would not only

always, understandably, be permitted to resign at their own request,

but might also be dismissed without such a request, if "their

financial maintenance seemed from the size of the income in their

family to be guaranteed in the long term ". The banks and the

railway authorities were empowered to adopt a similar regulation.

Three months' notice had to be given, and reasonable compensation

paid; but this severance payment cancelled all existing pension

rights. A provision was included to allow for the possible re-

employment of a woman who left her job as a result of this measure,

if there was a dramatic change for the worse in her financial situation2.

But this promise could not disguise the stark fact that the Constitution

was, in the context of equal rights for women in the public service,

a dead letter.

1. BA, R2/1291, letter from Severing to the Reich Ministers, 12 July,

1929.

2. "Gesetz über die Rechtsstellung der weiblichen Beamten ", RGB,

1932 I, 30 May, 1932, pp. 245 -46.
 271.

The law clearly found favour in some quarters; the Minister

of Posts lost no time in conferring with the Minister of the Interior

about the possibility of applying it to his sphere of control, and

on 7 June, 1932, issued his own version of it. This provided for

the more positive approach of circulating all married women

officials in the postal service with a written enquiry as to whether

they wished to submit their resignation. Those who did not resign

were to be required to declare the income of their family as a

whole and the occupation of their husband, so that the arbitration

committee established by the Minister could decide if these women

really needed their income; if not, they were to be dismissed, although,

again more positively, the order of dismissal was to be revoked if

their financial position ceased to be secure'. The Minister of the

Interior approved of these regulations to the extent that he

recommended the adoption of them by the Reich agencies which had not

yet proposed such a measure, to achieve national uniformity2.

The reaction among the feminists was, naturally, one of

opposition, but they were by no means united. A stinging attack on

the law of 30 May came from Dr. glare Schoedon in the radical feminist

magazine Die Frau im Staat. In an article entitled "Sic transit gloria..."

she claimed that Article 128 of the Constitution had been torn to

shreds and that a married woman no longer had any right to

independence, so dependent had she now been made on the ability and the

desire of her husband to support her. Dr. Schoedon poured burning

scorn on the clauses which were designed to mitigate the measure, and

1. BA, R431I/427, "Ausfahrungsanweisungen der DRP ", 7 June, 1932.

2. Ibid., letter from Freiherr von Gayl to the Reich Ministers and
authorities, 15 June, 1932.
 272.

then turned on those who had passed it into law, the men and

women of the political parties in the Reichstag. The Centre

Party had been the bill's sponsor, and its view that the place of

a married woman was in the family and not in employment was

faithfully reflected in the measure, wrote Klare Schoedon; the

views of the Nationalist Party were sufficiently similar to the

Centre's in this area to guarantee the bill its support. Only

the Communists were prepared to vote against it, insisting in

debate that it amounted to an outright denial of equal rights for

women; their declared adherence to this last principle did not

deter the Social Democrats from voting for the bill, as did the

Nazis - understandably enough, given their view that the ideal

place for women was in the homel.

Apart from the Communists, only one party did not support

the bill, and that was the tiny Staatspartei, the former DDP; its

members, including Gertrud Ammer - who ought to have been leading

a parliamentary campaign against the bill, given her position in the

women's movement - merely abstained. Indeed, Gertrud Bäumer spoke

against the measure in debate, prophetically calling it "a

dangerous precedent ", but it was her docility, and that of the other

women deputies, in the name of Party solidarity, which disgusted

K1Kre Schoedon most of all, particularly the way in which Helene

Weber of the Centre Party - herself a high- ranking civil servant in

the Prussian Ministry of Welfare2 - had spoken in favour of the measure.

The other source of deep concern to K1'dre Schoedon was the fact that

1. Kláre Schoedon, "Sic transit gloria... ", FiS, July 1932, pp. 5-7.

2. Horkenbach, op. cit., p. 766.

 273.

the dismissal of the eight or nine hundred women who might be

affected by the law would do more to damage the rights of women than

to benefit the unemployment situation, the purpose it was supposed to

1
serve .

But there were clearly enough women, both in and outside

the Reichstag, who were prepared to accept this measure to ensure

that there would be no concerted opposition from the ranks even of

interested women. Marie- Elisabeth Luders, who was a Staatspartei

deputy at the time, has since written that a hard campaign was

fought in the Reichstag against the law, but that some of the women's

professional organisations approved of this "arbitrary measure "2.

Certainly, those affiliated to the Churches - the stand taken by the

Union of Evangelical Women Teachers in 1923 against the employment of

married women is worth remembering here3 - did much to bear out

Klare Schoedon's fear that the measure would succeed in setting

the unmarried against the married woman civil servant4.

The law did, in any case, have one redeeming feature. As a

result of a campaign waged by the Union of Women Post and Telegraph

Officials, it was written into the law that a married woman who had to

retire because of "secure" financial circumstances would be re-employed

"if at all possible" if her husband ceased to be able to provide for

her. This, claimed Dr. Auguste Steiner, was an improvement on the

1. Klare Schoedon, op. cit., pp. 6 -7.

2. Marie-Elisabeth Luders, op. cit., p. 122.

3. See above, p. 262.

BA, 82/1291, letter from the VDEL to the Reich Minister of Finance,
7 June, 1923.

4. Klare Schoedon, op. cit., p. 6.

 274.

situation which had obtained for a year, in which married women

were the last candidates to be considered for a job, regardless of

their circumstances. In addition, she said, there were women in

responsible positions who were pleased enough to give up work in

return for a lump -sum payment, particularly young women who planned

to marry, and for whom the cash payment would be more useful than the

future prospect of a steady income. But none of this, said Dr.

Steiner, could really justify the attack on women's rights which the

law signified, and it was on these grounds that both the BDF and the

Union of Civil Servants condemned it1.

B. Purge and Co- ordination, 1913 -34

If things had looked bad for those who favoured equality of

opportunity for women in 1932, the appointment of Adolf Hitler as

Chancellor on 30 January, 1933, added the new dimension that many had

feared. The Nazis' strong anti -intellectualism had repercussions

for professional people as well as for students and academically

gifted schoolchildren. They accused highly- educated men and women

of a selfish individualism which was antithetical to the Party's

principle of "Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz", the subordination of self-

interest to the general good2. The Party's suspicion of intellectuals

is illustrated by the tight control which it maintained over the

professions. Of the eighteen "works communities" of the German Labour

Front, into which all workers of hand and brain were drawn in the summer

of 1933, only number thirteen, that of the liberal professions, was

1. Auguste Steiner, op. cit., pp. 4 -6.

2. Point 24 of the Nazi Party Programme, found in Hofer, op. cit.,

pp. 30 -31.
 275.
under the direct supervision of Robert Ley, the leader of the

Labour Front1. In addition, the individual groups of doctors,

engineers, teachers, civil servants, lawyers, lecturers and students

came under the control of offices created specially for them within the

organisation of the NSDAP itself; in this way, they were, again,

directly subordinate to Ley, this time in his capacity as Chief -

under Hitler - of the Party Organisation2. In this respect, the

professions were unique among all occupational groups3.

The Nazis moved with breath-taking speed: within a month of the

Machtübernahme Gertrud Baumer lost the job she had held in the

Ministry of the Interior for almost fourteen years, and other women

in the higher civil service were quickly dismissed as well4. Since

there was as yet no legislation to provide for such action, the

message Gertrud Bäumer received, quite without warning, on 27

February, 1933, was that she was being granted "leave of absence

until further notice" by the new Minister, Wilhelm Frick. After

enquiring the reason for this, she was told that her policies in

respect of both youth and women's affairs "are contrary to the attitude

of the Minister and make collaboration impossible ". Gertrud Bäumer

wryly commented in a letter to a friend that Frick's knowledge of her

policies was restricted to the distorted way they were described in

his own Party's propaganda5. She was finally given notice of dismissal

1. Taylor Cole, "The Evolution of the German Labour Front ", Political
Science Quarterly, 1937, Pp. 540 -41.

2. Organisationsbuch der NSDAP, Munich, 1938, p. 154.

3. Wolfgang Schafer, NSDAP. Entwicklun und Struktur der Staatsartei

des Dritten Reiches, Hanover, 1956, p. 57.

4o Beckmann, op. cit., letter to Emmy Beckmann, 13 April, 1933, p. 50.

5. BA, K1.Erw., no. 296 -(1), letter from Gertrud Baumer to Dorothee von
Velsen, 7 March, 1933.
 276.
- along with a number of other officials - on 12 April, as a result

of a law passed five days earlierl; paragraph four of this provided

for the removal from the publie service of those whom the Nazis

felt to be "politically unreliable "2. To add insult to injury,

Gertrud Bäumer's pension was made as small as possible, with her

pre-war service as a school -teacher left out of the reckoning3. She

did, however, derive some grim humour from the information that not

one but two men had been brought in to replace her at the Ministry of

the Interior, "since no -one has a grasp of all the business involved "4.

Gertrud Bäumer was convinced that the dismissal on political

grounds of herself and of other women in responsible positions was a

deliberate act of discrimination against "women as such ". But the

only other individual case she mentioned in her letter on this subject

to her close friend, Emmy Beckmann, besides her own, was that of a

Dr. Blochmann who was dismissed on grounds of "racial undesirability ",

since her mother was Jewish5. In the case of school -teachers, it is

clear that members of both sexes were being affected in a similar

way by the provisions of the law of 7 April, although proportionately

the women tended to fare worse. In Prussia in 1933, twenty -two of the

261 men who were headmasters of girls' senior schools lost their jobs,

while twenty -three of the sixty -eight headmistresses suffered the same

fate. But, in most cases, these men and women were re- employed as

senior teachers. Of the teachers themselves, if of the men and 4.5%

1. Beckmann, loc. cit.

2. "Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums ", RGB, 1933 I,

7 April, 1933, pp. 175 -77.

3. Beckmann, op. cit., letter to Emmy Beckmann, 30 June, 1933, p. 53.

4. Ibid., letter to Emmy Beckmann, 13 April, 1933, p. 50.

5. Beckmann, op. cit., letter to Emmy Beckmann, 13 April, 1933, pp. 50-
51.
 277.

of the women in established positions were dismissed; it was

estimated that at least two -thirds of the women were non -"Aryan ".

And almost all of the seventy -nine probationary women teachers who

were dismissed were found to be non -"Aryan ", too. The other

major group of women who gave up teaching at this time were

described as being those who had come into the schools at the time

of the reform of girls' senior schooling, in 1908, and who were

now due to retire because of their age. It was, no doubt, very

convenient indeed to have categories of women teachers who could be

dismissed on unconventional, if now legal, grounds, since there was

still the problem of a surplus of candidates for their jobs. During

1933 - no doubt largely as a result of the dismissals - the situation

improved so far that of the 1,320 candidates available at the start of

the year, only one -third were still without a position twelve months

laterl.

There were protests against the dismissal of both men and

women as a result of provisions in the law of 7 April, but often

these led to the dismissal of the person making the protest. Such

was the case with Professor Anna Siemsen of the University of Jena,

who made a courageous attack on the authorities for the dismissal of

a valued male colleague2. No doubt her membership of the SPD - for

which Party she was a Reichstag deputy from 1928 to 1930 - set the

seal on her own dismissal, after which she emigrated to Switzerland30

1. Ludwig Walker, op. cit., pp. 83 -85.

2. Kurt Grossmann, "Der Fall Anna Siemsen ", FiS, March 1933, pp. 7 8.

3. Wilhelm Kosch, Biographisches Staatshandbuch, 1963, vol. 2,

p. 1110.
 278.

There could be little surprise that the Berlin lawyer, Hilde

Benjamin, was banned from the practice of law: in addition to

having been a member of the defence team in the trial of the

murderer of the Nazi hero, Horst Wessel, she was a card- carrying

Communist; now she joined in the work of the Communist underground1.

Other women immediately found disfavour with the Government

because of their outspoken pacifism and internationalism during

the 1920s, and lost their jobs, often under one of the clauses of the

law of 7 April. Women like Alice Salomon - immediately unacceptable,

as a Jewess - who had had a distinguished career in social and

educational work2, and Minna Specht, a teacher who had turned her attention

to radical, experimental education after the war3, had acquired

an international reputation, but now saw no alternative to

emigration. Marie Elisabeth Luders, distinguished as a politician

as well as in her professional activity in social work and education,

stayed on in Germany, like Gertrud Bäumer, in relative obscurity,

eventually forbidden to publish her writings, as well as being

deprived of her job4. But these women suffered because of their

politics - in the broadest sense of the word - rather than because of

their sex; the large number of women who continued to hold

professional posts, and to be newly appointed to them, in and after

1933 confirms that the reasons the Nazis gave for the dismissals were

the true ones,

1. Erich Stockhorst, Ffinftausend Köpfe., Baden, 1967, p. 51.

2. Kosch, op. cit., p. 1060.

3. Internationales Jahrbuch für Geschichtsunterricht, 1961/62, p. 3.

4. Kosch, op. cit., p. 792.

 279.

However, since a substantial number of the women who had

been admitted to the professions and found a position in public

life under the Weimar Republic had also - as is understandable in

pioneers - been at least moderate feminists, and often belonged to

a liberal or socialist political party, the proportion of women who

lost their places in these areas for "political" reasons was high in

relation to their representation as a whole. The resulting

depletion of women's numbers was regretted not only by feminists and

progressives: misgivings, and even protests, were voiced by women

also from among the ranks of the Nazis' own supporters. Sophie

Rogge -Börner, who was not actually a Party member, but who

passionately sympathised with the v8lkisch elements in its ideology1,

wrote a heartfelt plea to Hitler in February 1933 for the inclusion

of the best people in the leadership of the country, regardless of

sex. She claimed, in the light of the previous couple of years'

experience, that the State and various official bodies were working

to deny women what she saw as their rightful place in the professions2.

Her outspokenness brought her into trouble with the Gestapo in 1934,

and eventually, in May 1937, a ban was placed on the publication of

her monthly magazines Die Deutsche Kämpferin, on the grounds that

she was publishing articles which were so critical of the regime that

they were considered abroad to be examples of opposition to National

Socialism within Germany3.

1. BDC, no. 280, report in Ahnenerbe, 18 August, 1938.

2. Sophie Rogge-Börner, "Deutsche Frauen an Adolf Hitler ", Reichenau,

op. cit., p. 8.

3. BDC, loc. cit.

 280.

Less impulsive than Sophie Rogge-B8rner, the conservative

Rini; Nationaler Frauen was anxious to demonstrate its approval of

the elimination of dissidents from prominent positions. But, in a

letter written to Hitler in April 1933, the leadership of the Ring

expressed concern that those women who were deservedly being dismissed

for "political unreliability" were too often being replaced not by

women of the right political persuasion but by ment. Such protests

were no surprise to Gertrud Baumer, who firmly believed that the

women in the Party, also, would have to take up the struggle for

the rights of women, particularly in the teaching profession2. She

based her hopes in this respect largely on Gertrud Baumgart's book

Frauenbewegung Gestern and Heute, which was a moderately feminist

tract - coming out strongly in favour of equality of opportunity for

women in the professions3 - written by a woman who had joined the

NSDAP in 19324. But Gertrud Baumer underestimated the ruthlessness

with which the Nazis would subdue any "women's rights" campaign in

their own ranks.

As Gertrud Baumer had feared, the law of 30 May, 1932, formed

a convenient precedent for measures directed against professional

women. The Nazi Government followed it on 30 June, 1933, with a law

dealing with civil servants generally, but affecting women particularly.

Section three of the law consisted of amendments to the 1932 act, all

1. BA, 84311/427, letter from the committee of the Ring Nationaler

Frauen to Hitler, April 1933 (exact date not given).

2. Beckmann, loc. cit.

3. Baumgart, op. cit., pp. 17 and 31.

4. BDC, Gertrud Bawngart's Party Membership Card.

 281.

of which constituted a worsening of the situation for married

women in the service of the State. In the first place, dismissal was

to be unconditional for those women whose husbands were also in

the service of the State, since it was assumed that this meant that

"their financial maintenance seemed from the size of the income in

their family to be guaranteed in the long term", as the condition

for dismissal was termed in this act, as in the previous one.

Another modification was that the period between notice of dismissal

and the termination of employment was reduced from three months

to one month; at the same time, the maximum possible severance

pay for long service was lowered from sixteen times the salary paid

to the woman in her last month of employment to twelve times that

sum, although the amounts for shorter periods of service were not

changed. The paragraph allowing for re- employment of women

dismissed remained, surprisingly, intact, but since the 1932 law had

specified that this would occur "if at all possible ", it would be

easy for a Government to ignore the provision de facto altogether.

And now dismissal and - in theory, at least - reinstatement were to

be at the discretion of the Government alone, whose decisions were

made binding on the courts, instead of being in the hands of the

committee of arbitration set up under the 1932 act1.

One of the saving graces of the 1932 act had been that it

applied only to women employed in the service of the State at the

national level, in the Reich Ministries and public corporations.

This immediately exempted school-teachers, who were under the

1. "Gesetz zur Anderung von Vorschriften auf dem Gebiet des allgemeinen
Beamten -, des Besoldungs- und des Versorgungsrechts", RGB, 1933
I, 30 June, 1933, Section III, "Rechtstellung der weiblichen
Beamten", p. 435.
 282.

the jurisdiction of the individual states in the absence of a Reich

Ministry of Education, although it took in some lawyers, doctors, and

university staff. Now, however, in June 1933, the Government

widened the scope of their act very considerably to include any

married woman employed in the public service at state and local level

also. Exceptions to the rule of dismissal on the grounds of

financial security were still to be permitted in individual cases, if

the Minister of the Interior approved; but the tone of the law as a

whole suggested that such exceptions would be rare. Finally, in this

section, a small sub -paragraph was inserted which was of major

importance: it provided for the possibility of "departure from

the provisions of Article 128, paragraph 2, of the Constitution ",

and thus allowed, once again, for women in the public service to

be remunerated at a different - in fact, a lower b rate from men in

a similar position1.

To add to the provisions concerning married women, and to this

blatant discriminatory measure against women as such, there was

another clause in the act unfavourable to women. It was decreed that

women could not be appointed to public service positions - in the

civil service or in the professions - on a permanent basis until they

reached the age of thirty- five2. Commenting on this point, the

Frankfurter Zeitun - which had managed to retain some of its character

1. Ibid., pp. 434-35.

20 Ibid., Section II, "Die Begründung des Beamtenverhaltnisses ", p, 434.

This part of the act also stipulated that only persons who were
prepared "to support the national state at all times and without
reservation" could be employed by the State, and barred non-"Aryans"
and their spouses from the public service.
 283.

and independence1 - observed that

"the labour market and family policy considerations

which are involved in this temporary postponement of
fitness of a woman for such a position in the public
service are clear ".

The paper also implied - it could safely do no more - that the new

law, although clearly based on the law of 30 May, 1932, had extended

its scope far beyond the intentions of its creators2. Some

authorities, at any rate, saw fit to implement the new law promptly:

the zealous officials of Hamburg, for example, dismissed 103

permanent and sixty -eight probationary married women teachers only

a month after the passage of the law3.

Most of the provisions in the law of 30 June applied

specifically to married women, but the clauses affecting remuneration

and appointment on a permanent basis caused considerable

apprehension among female civil servants and teachers, especially,

that there was to be a systematic campaign to drive women out of

professional positions altogether. The new measures seemed to

reinforce the propaganda put out by the Nazis, both before and during

1933, about the Party's view of the role of women. Frick now found

himself in the position of having to allay the fears which his own

Party had consciously generated by publishing a letter which he sent

to each of the Reich Ministers, to the governments of the Lander,

and to the Reichsstatthalter4. In it, he observed that a number of

1. F. B. Aikin- Sneath, "The Press in Modern Germany", German Life and

Letters, London, 1937, p. 58.

2. "Das Beamtenrecht der Frau ", FZ, 18 July, 1933.

3. Report in FZ, 4 August, 1933.

4. "Die Beschaftigung weiblicher Beamten und Lehrer: Eine grunds-

ätzliche Stellungnahme des Reichsinnenministers", VB, 13 October,
1933.
 284.

authorities had proceeded with far more vigour than was necessary

in the matter of dismissing women from posts or demoting them, in

the belief that this was in accordance with National Socialist

policy. Prick went on to say in the strongest terms that the law

of the land did not provide for a general campaign against women

in the public service, whether as civil servants or teachers; rather,

the law of 7 April applied to men as well as women. As for the

law of 30 June, he said, it seemed that he had to repeat that its

section covering the dismissal of married women should be applied only

to married women, and that these must have their financial

maintenance guaranteed "in the long term "; he had received a number

of complaints that this law was being applied more freely than was

legally permitted, which he regretted. But Prick did mention that

in his view if there were two candidates for office, one male and

one female, the man should be given preference, although he also felt

that women ought to be appointed to positions to which they were

specially suited, namely those connected with youth welfare and

some areas of education1.

Although Frick demonstrated relative moderation here, it

became apparent that much of the damage had already been done.

Women had not been well represented in the higher grades of the

professions before 1933, but now those who had been employed at this

level were no longer to be found there; this was very largely, of

course, the result of the law of 7 April. But the women who were

dismissed from high-level positions were not, on the whole, replaced

by other women. This was the case with those women who had been

employed as higher officials in the appropriate ministries of the

1. BA, 84311/427, letter from Frick to the Reich Ministers, Land

governments and Reichsstatthalter, 5 October, 1933.
 285.

Reich, Prussian and Saxon governments before 1933, as advisers in

matters of female and child labour; their dismissal from positions

which came within the scope of the welfare activities deemed suitable

for women was not followed by the appointment of more women1. However,

of the four women who had been senior industrial welfare superintendents

before 1933, three were retained in office, along with a number

of their more junior colleagues2.

In the schools, however, it was claimed that women were being

driven out of their jobs - particularly in the senior schools - in

favour of male teachers. Hamburg was regarded as a particular

offender, since in addition to dismissing its married women teachers

it was also forcing unmarried women into premature retirement at

the age of fifty -two3. On a larger scale, Rust, the Prussian Minister

of Education, announced in April 1934 that the present ratio of

male to female teachers in girls' senior schools of 3:5.3 should

be adjusted to 3:2 by filling vacancies with men. War-wounded male

teachers were to be given priority, except in subjects like biology

and gymnastics, which should continue to be taught only by women4.

Two Nazi principles were obviously in conflict here: the Party

emphatically rejected any kind of coeducation and insisted on the

separate functions of the sexes, which would logically mean that

girls should be taught exclusively by women; but it also asserted that

1. Else Luders, "Weibliche Aufsicht in Fabriken ", Die deutsche

K,mpferin, August 1935, p. 183.

2. Ibid., p. 182.

3. "MAdchenbildungs- und Lehrerinnenfragen in der Pädagogischen Presse",

Die Frau, June 1934, P. 571.

4. Report in FZ, 9 April, 1934.

 286.

men should be given preference in job opportunities, particularly

in the professions. In this instance, the practical advantage

attached to the second of these - that of providing employment for those

male teachers who could not find a job in a boys' school - was

regarded as the overriding consideration.

Effective protests on a corporate basis against moves to

discriminate against women in the professions were hardly possible,

since the Nazis almost at once took the astute step of "reforming"

the professional organisations. In April 1933 Gertrud Bäumer

wrote to Emmy Beckmann, President of the Allgemeiner Deutscher

Lehrerinnenverein, with the advice that the organisation should join

the Nazi Teachers' League, without protest and if necessary under

different leadership, in order at least to continue in existence1.

But a month later she once more wrote to Emmy Beckmann, this

time to ask her to write an article about the ADLV for Die Frau,as

an epitaph2. Official pressure on the membership of the ADLV had

led to its leadership dissolving the organisation early in May 1933;

its last act was to recommend its members to join the NS- Lehrerbund

(Nazi Teachers' League), an organisation for men and women teachers

alike3. The control of the Party over the teaching profession seemed

undisputed when in January 1934 Hans Schemm, Bavarian Minister of

Education and leader of the NSLB, announced that 90% of all German

teachers were members of his organisation4. As far as the women

1. Beckmann, op. cit., letter to Emmy Beckmann, 13 April, 1933, p. 50.

2. Ibid., letter to Emmy Beckmann, 11 May, 1933, p. 52.

3. Gertrud Blamer, "Das Haus ist zerfallen", Die Frau, June 1933,
p. 513.

4. Die Frau, June 1934, op. cit., p. 570.

 287.

were concerned, they lost not only their organisation but also

their magazine, which was first taken over by a Nazi teacher,

Hedwig F8rster, and then replaced by a new publication under the

editorship of Auguste Reber- Gruber, an official of the NSLB1.

A few groups did manage to survive, at least for a time,

while the Gleichschaltuna (co- ordination) of the professional

organisations proceeded apace. But these were special cases; for

example, the Union of Catholic Women Teachers (VkdL) was protected

by the Concordat of 20 July, 1933, between the Nazi Government and

the Vatican. Frick confirmed this both in a broadcast and in the

press in October 1933, leaving the VkdL to draw the conclusion that

its "continued existence is assured, and the orders for the dissolution

of the 'old associations' do not apply to the VkdL "2. But, even so,

this group's days were numbered: it was finally dissolved in

October 19373, when relations between the Catholic Church and the

Nazi regime were becoming increasingly strained. One of the feminists'

valued organisations, the Deutscher Akkademikerinnenbund, was allowed

to continue in existence, too, largely because it had sacrificed its

leader, Marie- Elisabeth Lüders4, and shown complete willingness to

co- operate with the new orders. But, as always, the Nazis could not

tolerate for long the survival of any group which was not of their own

1. Ibid., p. 571.

2. Report in DMäd, 15 February, 1934, p. 48.

3. Report in FZ, 20 October, 1937.

4. Kirkpatrick, op. cit., pp. 50 and 55.

5. BA, K1.Erw., 296 -(1), letter from Gertrud Böumer to Dorothee von
Velsen, 15 November, 1934.
 288.

creation, and in December 1935 the Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund

was dissolved to allow the Nazis' own Reichsbund deutscher

Akademikerinnen a monopoly1.

The old multiplicity of organisations within each profession

was superseded by a monolithic body under strict Party control. In

addition to the NS-Lehrerbund (NSLB) for teachers there was the

NSD- Dozentenbund for university lecturers, Hans Frank's Bund

Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Juristen for lawyers2, the

Reichsbund der Deutschen Beamten (RDB) for administrators - replacing

the nine hundred groups which had existed formerly3 - and the Reichs-

árztekammer (Reich Chamber of Doctors) for the medical profession4.

The lines were now firmly drawn between the individual professions,

organised on a national basis, with men and women belonging to the

same associations. This contrasted noticeably with previous practice,

and was hardly in line with the Nazis' basic policy of keeping the

sexes in separate groups. But it was completely consistent with the

Nazi view that political leadership was the concern of men alone - and

there was no attempt to disguise the fact that these new professional

groupings were political formations - and it was also in keeping with

the Nazi idea of the "community", whether that of the nation as a

whole or that of a section of its. However, since women were in a

1. "F8nf Jahre Reichsfrauenfiihrung", FK, February 1939, P. 4.

2. This changed its name to the more Germanic NS- Rechtswahrerbund

(NSRB) in April 1936 (Meyers Lexikon, vol. 8, Leipzig, 1940,
col. 150).

3. Hermann Neef, Das Beamtenor:anisationswesen im nationalsozialist-

ischen Staat, Berlin, 1935, PP. 4-5, 11 -12.

4. "Reichsarzteordnung", RGB, 1935 I, 13 December, 1935, PP. 1433 -44.

5. Auguste Reber -Gruber, "Die Stellung der Frau im NSLB ", Reber -Gruber,
op. cit., p. 4, explains and justifies the new order in the NSLB
to women teachers.
 289.

minority in all professions, and in a small minority in the

administration and the legal profession, their chances of

influencing the running of these organisations - insofar as this

was possible in the Nazi State - were minimal.

Recognition was quickly given, however, to the fact that there

were areas within each of the professions which were of particular

concern to women. Early in 1934, the organisation of the teaching

profession, the one in which women were best represented, took

steps to cater for the large areas in which women were

principally involved by appointing women "advisers ". Thus, Auguste

Reber -Gruber became the representative of women teachers within the

NSLB, while Hedwig F5rster was appointed leader of the section for

girls' schooling in the NSLB1. Both were teachers, and both had

joined the NSDAP before the Machtiibernahme2. Dr. Reber-Gruber's

position developed into one of considerable scope, so that her

responsibilities were divided into seven sub -sections each of which

was led by a reliable woman Party member; for example, Elise Lenz

was put in charge of the affairs of women teachers in the elementary

schools, while Friederike Matthias was responsible for the interests

of women teachers in the girls' senior schools . In addition to these

appointments at the national level of the NSLB, a start was made at

giving women representation in the area NSLB groups by appointing

women "advisers" in each Gau and even at the more local level of the

1. Die Frau, June 1934, op. cit., p. 571.

2. BDC, File on Auguste Reber -Gruber, and Hedwig F8rster's Party

membership card.

3. BA, Slg. Sch. 230, "Angeschlossene Berufsverb1nde ", undated, ?1938.

 290.

Kreis; these women had the dual function of representing women

teachers° interests in the NSLB as a whole, and of keeping

Auguste Reber -Gruber in touch with the affairs of women teachers

at

the local level

The Reichsbund der Deutschen Beamten, in similar fashion,

established a Women's Section to deal with matters specifically

links between
concerning female civil servants and to forge close

them and the Deutsches Frauenwerk. The leader of this new office,

member. She
Dora Hein, was a civil servant and long -standing Party

same time was

took up her duties on 1 October, 19342, and at the

appointed to a position in the national office

of the DFW, to

In addition, it
ensure that the co- operation desired was achieved.

female Party
was recommended that, where necessary, "a suitable

for women's
member" should be appointed as an assistant responsible

The legal profession,

affairs in the local branches of the RDB3.

too, had its woman representative: Ilse Eben- Servaes, a solicitor

became the
who had joined the Party soon after the Machtübernahme,

interest to women
delegate in charge of legal matters of special
Her appointment to
lawyers within the Nazi lawyers' organisation.

positions in the Party Leadership and the

National Women's Leadership4

contact between the

ensured that, once again, there would be close

women as represented by
women in a profession and the mass of German

1. Auguste Reber -Gruber, op. cit., pp. 10 -11,

statement by Dora Hein,

2. BDC, Party Census of 1939 and a personal
28 July, 1939.

Deutschen Beamten ", Die

3. "Eine Frauenabteilung beim Reichsbund der
Frau, November 1934, p. 120.

for the NSDAP Reichsleit, 2

4. BDC, answers to a questionnaire
October, 1939.
 291.

the women's organisations.

The appointment of these women to positions in the

professional organisations signified the acceptance by the Nazis of

women in professional occupations. It was made clear that women

in the professions were, however, to regard themselves as women first

and then as civil servants or doctors or teachers. To emphasise

this, separate groups of women in each profession were eventually

created, which were affiliated to the DFW as corporate members as

well as being an integral part of the national professional

organisations. More than merely tolerating the presence of women

in these occupations, the Nazi leadership even appointed married

women - Auguste Reber- Gruber and Ilse Eben Servaes, for example -

to their representative positions, in direct contrast to their

loud objections to and measures against the professional

Doppelverdiener. There was even for a time a National Association

of Married Women Teachers affiliated to the DFW1. Thus it appears

that the Nazis' fundamental objection was indeed to "politically

unreliable" women, while sound Party members were not denied

advancement purely because they were women. This applied, of course,

to the Party's organisations, but to neither the higher échelons of

the Party itself nor the Government, since it was firmly insisted that

women should play no part in "political" affairs2. In keeping with the

demand that the sexes should be treated as separate groups, women

could hold key positions only in the women's section of a national

1. BA, loc. cit.

2. Hitler's description of his constant opposition to women in politics

is to be found in Hitler's Table Talk, London, 1953, no. 126,
26 January, 1942 (Evening), pp. 251-52.
 292.

organisation, or, in special cases - like Ilse Eben-Servaes - as

isolated female representatives in such an organisation, which

was firmly under male leadership.

Throughout 1934 teachers continued to be dismissed from their

positions or demoted as a result of the operation of the law of

7 April, 1933. Both men and women suffered in this process of

"purification" of the profession. At the same time, however, there

were a few cases of women being promoted to responsible positions:

Hedwig Förster was certainly "reliable" enough to deserve a post

as headmistress of a senior school, and no doubt the others who

were similarly favoured were equally considered suitable on political

grounds. Here, at least, were some examples of dismissed women being

replaced by other women1. Also in 1934, Frick expressed grave concern

at the reduction that had taken place in the number of qualified

women welfare workers. Naturally, he said,

"this profession, too, must be purged of those elements

whose character prevents their performing service to the
national State. But it is not the intention of the
National Socialist State to remove all female civil
servants and employees from the service of the State on
account of their sex, as a matter of principle....
Often the decrease in the number of women welfare workers
is the result of a false application of the principles
concerning the Doppelverdienere2.

Moves were made, also, to allay the fears which had arisen

about the prospects for women doctors. It was reported in the

Völkischer Beobachter early in 1934 that there were still persistent

1. Reports in DMäd., 15 February, 1934, p. 48; 15 May, 1934, P. 144;

15 August, 1934, p. 240. Promotions and dismissals or demotions
were reported on the same page in each issue.

2. "'Weibliche Beamte in der Wohlfahrtspflege teilweise unentbehrlich",

Der Deutsche, 5 January, 1934.
 293.

rumours that women were to be barred from panel practice and

probably also from studying medicine at university. To dispel these,

the leader of the doctors' organisation, Dr. Wagner, had issued a

statement to the effect that it was intended to admit to panel

practice doctors of either sex in the lower income bracket; it was

claimed that this meant that there was to be no special regulation

concerning women, but since the income involved was to be that of the

doctor together with that of his or her spouse, the result was

bound to be that more men than women would be eligible. In addition,

preference was to be given to those doctors who were married, in

particular those with families, without reference to sex. Thus,

concluded Dr. Wagner, "there can be no talk of any plan to throw

women out of the medical profession "1. By making this statement,

he was in fact clarifying a situation which had been in doubt largely

as a result of his own earlier threats to ban women from panel practice

and to restrict their activity within the profession2.

C. Consolidation and the Conflict between Doctrine and Necessity,

1934 -40

The number of women doctors, and their share of places in

the profession, increased steadily throughout the 1930s, from

2,455 (5%) at the beginning of 1930 to 2,814 (6%) at the beginning

of 1934, and to 3,650 (7.6%) at the beginning of 19393. By 1936,

almost half of all employed women doctors were engaged in panel

1. "Keine Ausschaltung der Frauen von der arztlichen Tätigkeit ", VB,
7 February, 1934.

2. Kelchner, op. cit., p. 42.

3. St.J.: 1932, P. 404; 1936, p. 510; 1939/40, p. 586.

 294.

practice. In addition, 42% of all women doctors were married, and of

these 70% were mothers1. At least in the medical profession, Nazi

fears that women would selfishly sacrifice motherhood for a career

were proved groundless. Women doctors assumed great importance in

the network of organisations built up by the Party to try to

involve women and girls directly in the life of the community. The

women's Labour Service, the BdM, and educational and welfare

services were among those areas in which expert medical advice was

required2, and the desire to keep the sexes separate in their

organisational activities meant that this advice, and treatment, would

have to be provided by women. The Nazi leadership accepted women

in this field without feeling that their campaign against

intellectual women was in any way compromised, since they argued

that medicine was essentially a practical occupation3.

Teaching was another of the professions to which women were,

in the Nazi view, more or less suited. The continuing surplus in

the profession, however, led to attempts to arrest the steady flow

of girls into courses to prepare them for it, even as late as 1936,

In the following year, however, this policy was reversed, and

increasing encouragement was given to girls to train as teachers4.

Given this degree of policy change, and the removal of a number of

women from teaching on political or racial grounds, it is perhaps

surprising that the proportion of women in the profession remained

1. "Zahl und Familienstand der Arztinnen ", Die Frau, January 1936,
pp. 238 -39.

2. Report in Die Frau, April 1937, p. 402.

3. "Was Zahlen lehren", VB, 4 September, 1936.

4. See above, chapter 4, pp. 210 -13.

 295.

fairly stable throughout the 1930s. It was understandable that

their numbers increased, if only marginally, on the staffs of the

elementary schools, since work with young children was particularly

approved of for women by the Government. In the middle schools,

concerned with children between ten and sixteen years of age,

women's share among the teachers fell during the decade by about 5/.

But in the senior schools their proportion declined by a mere 2%

between 1931 and 1939 which was remarkable in view of the setting of

the 3:2 ratio in favour of male teachers for the girls' senior

schools in Prussia in 1934. As it was, women remained very much in

the majority on the staffs of German girls' senior schools, with a

share of 68% in 19391.

The Nazis were well aware that teachers were in a very

influential position vis -k -vis young people, and were therefore

determined to involve teachers in the work of the Party and its

organisations, to ensure that their influence was exerted to propagate

the National Socialist Weltanschauung. Auguste Reber-Gruber pointed

out that the proportion of women teachers among holders of the Party's

Gold Badge was high, and expressed the opinion that all women teachers

ought to be members of the NS-Frauenschaft. Many women teachers were,

she claimed, already heavily involved in the work of the women's

organisations, in the Labour Service, and in the provision of evening

classes2. Equally, women teachers should accept and welcome the work

of the Bund deutscher Nadel, which had great educational value in the

1. St.J.: 1932, pp. 424 -25; 1937, PP. 574 -76; 1939/40, 611 -14.

2. Article by Auguste Reber -Gruber in Die Deutsche Höhere Schule,

1935, no. 14, PP. 483 -84.
 296.

realm of character development. Dr. Reber -Gruber issued a warning

in this connection, saying that "Whoever opposes the work of

Adolf Hitler's young people...has absolutely no right to be a

teacher in the Third Reich "1

Lip- service to Nazi demands of this kind was not sufficient.

A Party official in Trier reported in 1935 that one woman teacher

in the area

"has been a member of the NS-Frauenschaft since 1 July

1934. She does not buy our newspapers and has a very
close association with the clergy. As it was reported
to me in confidence, she is anything but a National
Socialist. Her entire attitude to us at present can
only be considered a facade in order to maintain her
position "20

On the other hand, zealous Party workers were noticed and praised,

and even sometimes rewarded. For example, an official of the Nazi

Teachers' League, Friederike Matthias, was given a senior position

in the Kiel educational administration in 1935 because she had

dissolved a teachers' organisation in autumn 1933, and enrolled its

members in the Nazi Teachers' League; in addition, she had won for the

Reichsbund deutscher Akademikerinnen a respected position in the

international association of professional women, without departing

from National Socialist principles3.

The favourable position of women in the teaching and medical

professions was not maintained in the academic life, although, as

1. Op. cit., pp. 480 -82.

2. F. J. Hegen, Nationalsozialismus im Alltag, Boppard, 1967,

"Beurteilung einer Lehrerin durch einen Ortsgruppenleiter in Trier
vom 7. Januar 1935 ", no. 130, p. 256.

3. "Aus dem NSLB ", Die deutsche hohere Schule, 1935, no. 10, p. 10.
 297.

Gertrud Baumer - hardly an apologist for the Nazi regime - pointed

out in 1939, a number of women were appointed to university staffs

after 19331. Women had, in fact, never constituted more than about

one per cent of university staff members, a level which they reached

in winter 1930 -31; after the purge of 1933, their numbers were

reduced in winter 1934 -35 to 28 (0.5%) from an unprecedentedly high

figure of 74 in 1932 -33. New appointments did, however, bring their

numbers up to 46 (0.8%) by 1936. In the technical universities, where

there were very few women lecturers, the same pattern emerged, so that

in winter 1935-36 eight women lecturers constituted 0.5% of the

total number. The teacher- training colleges experienced a different

trend, with a continuous drop in the female share of their staffs

from 20% in 1931 to below 4% in 1934 -35, and to less than 2% in 1935-

362. The heavy losses sustained by female academics after 1933 were

largely attributed in the Nazi press - and by Gertrud Baumer, too3 -

to the purges sanctioned by the law of 7 April, 1933. The losses

included the two women who in 1930 had been full professors in

universities; one of these, Margarete von Wrangell, a botanist, had

died in 1932, but Mathilde Vaerting had been dismissed from the

University of Jena "on political grounds "4. But in spite of the Nazi

view that some subjects were much less suitable for women to study and

1. Gertrud Baumer, "Zur Berufsgeschichte der deutschen Akademikerin ",

Die Frau, June 1939, p. 453.

2. Figures from St.J.: 1932, p. 431; 1933, pp. 524 -27; 1935, P. 525;
1936, pp. 548 -49.

3. Gertrud Baumer, loc. cit.

4. "Die deutsche Frau in Lehre und Forschung", FK, February 1938,

pp. 2 -3.
 298.

teach than others - the "rational" ones, particularly mathematics

and the sciences being deemed the least suitable - women continued

to be represented, albeit in very small numbers, in a wide variety of

disciplines; in 1936 they were actually better represented in the

medical and science faculties than in Arts1.

The professional occupations to which women were most suited

were, in the Nazi view, those which had a direct practical application.

This was what justified the large numbers of women in the teaching

profession,- and also those in medicine. In 1935, a contributor to

the official magazine of the NS- Frauenschaft, NS-Frauenwarte, asserted

that architecture was indeed a practical subject, because the design of

buildings was something which very greatly impinged on one's daily

life. Thus, she continued, women's role in the home and her

appreciation of the merits and limitations of a house from an

altogether practical point of view made her particularly suited to

be an architect2. It was to be another three years before original

Nazi policy, strictly interpreted, was to be departed from sufficiently

to allow an official spokesman to suggest that engineering was another

practical occupation which was eminently suitable for women3. The

changes in the economic situation and the professional market in these

crucial years, and the course of German foreign policy by the latter

date of 1938, made such a suggestion acceptable in a way that it was

1. "Dozentinnen an den deutschen Hochschulen ", Die Frau,, November

1936, pp. 432 -33.

2. Irmgard Depres, reported in the feature "Frau und Beruf ", Die
Frau, March 1935, p. 382.

3. "Warum nicht: 'Fräulein Ingenieur' ? ", Die Frau, November 1938,

PP. 94 -95.
 299.

not in 1935 or even 1936.

When they referred to the practical occupations to which

women were most suited, the Nazis invariably - in 1939 as in

1930 or 1933 - meant social work of any kind. This was largely

because it was absolutely compatible with their theories about the

nature and abilities of women. But it was a view that was

increasingly justified by the growing need among the organisations,

particularly those involving women and children, for the advice and

practical assistance which only a trained social worker could give1.

The operation of the women's section of the Labour Front, for

example, required a considerable number of factory social workers and

inspectors, as well as experts in its numerous advisory centres

throughout the country2. There were many other areas in which social

workers were required, especially in the Party's welfare organisation,

the NSV, in the women's Labour Service, as medical social workers,

in youth welfare, and, above all, among families, whether those in

urban areas or those who had settled on the land3. Once the Second

World War had begun, however, priority was given to the recruitment of

factory welfare workers, even, if necessary, from among those women who

had entered other branches of welfare work, since there was a serious

and growing shortage of social workers in industry which was

particularly undesirable at a time when women were increasingly being

encouraged to replace male industrial workers who had joined the armed

1. For an account of the Nazi view of the place of women in social work,
see Hildegard Villnov, "Die Frau in der sozialen Arbeit ", NS-
Frauenbuch, Munich, 1934, pp. 70-73.

2. "Aus der Arbeit des Frauenamtes der Deutschen Arbeitsfront ", Die
Frau, May 1939, p. 442. See also Chapter 3, p. 149.

3. Hildegard Villnov, op. cit., pp. 71 -72.

 300.

forces1.

Another area of the broad social work category that was of

particular importance once the war broke out was nursing. Before

1933, the bulk of sick nursing had been conducted by charitable

organisations run by the Churches, with nuns playing a central

role2; there had also been the women's section of the Red Cross,

which had played an important part in the work of nursing during

the First World War3, and forihis reason was not favoured by those

pacifist radicals who believed that the Red Cross was an instrument

of war-mongers4. In 1934, the nursing corps of the Red Cross came

under the leadership of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, and was closely

involved in the work of the NSV5. But the decline in the number of

nursing nuns, as part of the general decline in recruitment to convents

due to "the change in ideology ", led to a serious shortage of

nurses in the mid- 1930s6. In addition, the Nazis aimed to create

a corps of nurses which would be absolutely committed to National

Socialism, and not under the control of a rival ideological interest

group like the Roman Catholic Church, which had challenged official

policy by forbidding its own nurses to take part in "certain

operations", notably sterilisation7.

1. "Vermittlung von Volkspflegerinnen in soziale Betriebsarbeit ", RAB,

1940 I, 16 February, 1940, p. 101.

2. "Der Nachswuchs an Krankenschwestern ", FZ, 10 January, 1938.

3. "Die Frau im Roten Kreuz ", FZ, 12 November, 1936.

4. "Die Welt wird schöner mit jedem Tag ", FiS, May 1929, P. 4.

5. FZ, loc. cit.

6. FZ, 10 January, 1938, op. cit.

7. "Vereidigung von NS-Schwestern ", FZ, 6 October, 1936.

 301.

To meet their need for more nurses in a "politically reliable"

organisation, the Nazis founded their own group, the NS- Schwesternschaft,

commonly known as the "Brown Sisters ", in 19361. Its leader was

the organisational chief of the NSV, Erich Hilgenfeldt, and he

appointed two women, Hildegard Rancke and Margarete Liesegang, as

his chief assistants in the running of the corps, after consulting

Dr. Wagner of the doctors' organisation2. But they soon found

that a secular organisation had a problem that the Catholic nursing

orders could not have: Hilgenfeldt estimated at the beginning of

1938 that the "Brown Sisters" were losing members through marriage

and consequent retirement at a rate of 35% per year3. Attempts

were made to attract a wider group of girls into nursing by

announcing, in July 1937, that a domestic science course could be

counted as a part of the training for the profession4, and publicity

was given in the press to the activities of the NS- Schwesternschaft,

which took on a martial tone with the personal oath of allegiance to

Hitler administered to each recruits. But the membership of the

"Brown Sisters" in January 1938 looked very meagre at 6,000,

especially beside an announcement that the estimated shortage of

nurses necessitated the recruitment of 30,000 more women6.

1. Ibid.

2. HA, Reel 13, folder 254, report in "Partei-Archiv ", November 1936.

3. FZ, 10 January, 1938, op. cit.

4. HA, Reel 13, folder 253, Reiehsfrauenftihrung, "Rundschreiben reu

Nr. 66/37 ", 12 July, 1937.

5. "'Wo wir stehen, steht die Treue: "', Fränkische Tageszeitung, 20

February, 1937.

6. FZ, loc. cit.

 302.

During the Second World War, the position was so serious that girl

medical students had to be compulsorily drafted into nursing for

spells of three months eachl.

The area of the professions in which women were least well

represented before 1933 was law. Throughout the Weimar years,

women were excluded from the judiciary in Roman Catholic Bavaria2,

and although elsewhere in Germany women were eligible for appointment

as judges, no woman judge was given a place in the Supreme Court

of Justice before the 1950s3. Even as late as 1930, there was still

no female public prosecutor in the relatively liberal state of

Prussia4. That Germany was not particularly backward in this context

may be illustrated by an article, commenting on the British situation,

carried by The Times on the first day of 1973, more than fifty years

after all judicial offices were opened to women5:

"About 6 per cent of barristers are women; MZrs. Justice

Lane is still the only woman among 70 High Court judges;
there are no women at the Court of Appeal nor have any
Law Ladies joined the Law Lords...." .

Nevertheless, the figures in the 1933 census in Germany seemed to show

that women's representation in the legal profession was very meagre

indeed: out of 10,441 judges and public prosecutors thirty -six were

1. Ilse McKee, To-Morrow the World, London, 1960, p. 99.

2. Report in BF, July/August, 1932, p. 2.

3. Johannes Feest, "Die Bundesrichter ", W. Zapf (ed.), Beitr'dge zur

Analyse der deutschen Oberschicht, Tffbingen, 1964, p. 152.

4. "10 Jahre weibliche Richter ", Die Frau, January 1933, P. 249.

5. Douie, op. cit., p. 64.

6. Ruth Miller, "Women in law: a question of changing society's views

of women's role and the profession's needs ", The Times, 1 January,
1973.
 303.

women, and only 282 of the 18,766 solicitors were women1. The

presence of over 1,000 girl law students in the universities at

the same time2, however, suggested that there would soon be a marked

increase in the number of women practising law, if no obstacle were

put in their way.

After the Nazi take -over there were, however, to be changes

which affected the legal profession as a whole, and ones which

particularly affected women lawyers. For a start, Hitler's deep

antagonism towards the judiciary, coupled with his desire to make

it politically docile, led to its being purged and also to a restriction

of its sphere of competence3. The desirability of having women as

judges, counsel or lawyers was the subject of discussions at

Government level for some time. In August 1936, after a meeting in

the Ministry of Justice at which the question had still not been

resolved, Hess took it upon himself to ask Hitler's opinion, since

"the Party also has a special interest in this matter ". This settled

the question, since Hitler firmly pronounced that women should be

neither judges nor counsel, and that women law graduates would in

future be able to find State employment only in administrative

positions. The possibility of women continuing to become lawyers in

private practice was not ruled out by this judgment4.

Hitler's decision was accepted as definitive by the Government,

although it raised many problems for his Ministers. At least those

1. "Berufszählung von 1933 ", St.J., 1938, p. 32.

2. St.J., 1932, pp. 426 -27.

3. Hubert Schorn, Der Richter im Dritten Reich, Frankfurt, 1959,

pp. 11-14, 83 -84.

4. BA, 84311/427, letter from Bormann to Gtirtner, 24 August, 1936.

 304.

women who were already employed as fully -established lawyers and

judges were not to be affected by the ruling, but there remained

in addition a considerable number of junior barristers and

trainee solicitors who were now obliged to alter their career

aspirations and for whom suitable alternative employment would have

to be found. Bormann expressed the hope that they would all be

found places in administration, and left the arranging of this to

the Ministry of Justicel. Freisler, acting for Gartner in this

matter, expressed very great concern about the prospects for these

women, many of whom, he pointed out, had spent large sums of money

on their training, had pursued their studies with dedication and

diligence, and who often had dependent relatives to support.

Freisler wrote to the various Reich and Prussian Ministers to the

effect that the Ministry of Justice had managed to find places for

a number of the women concerned, as had Frau Scholtz-Klink's office,

but there remained a number for whom, he hoped, his colleagues in the

other Ministries would be able to find employment commensurate with

their qualifications and ability, preferably on a permanent basis2.

While Freisler's concern in this case does him credit, it is

remarkable that it was possible for Hitler to cause so much difficulty

for his Government by an arbitrary statement of opinion which his

Ministers did not consider opposing. This was, of course, at least

partly an ideological question, with Party doctrine opposed to the

appearance of women lawyers in courts concerned with criminal cases;

the functions of a sentencing judge who represented the authority

1. BA, R43II /427, letter from Bormann to Gartner, 24 August, 1936.

2. Ibid., letter from Freisler to the Reich and Prussian Ministers, with
the exception of the Chancellery and Hess, 16 January, 1937.
 305.

of the State were clearly ones to be exercised by men alone1, in the

same way that representation in political life was reserved for men.

The role of the women's organisations in this case went beyond

finding places for some of the women lawyers on their staffs; it was,

in addition, Frau Scholtz-Klink's duty to explain and to justify

to the women of the nation this measure which seemed to discriminate

against those of their sex who had chosen a legal career. Frau

Scholtz -Klink delegated this task to, appropriately, her own legal

adviser in the National Women's Leadership, Dr. Ilse Eben- Servaes,

who had a lucrative legal practice of her own2. Ironically, it was

in 1936, the year of Hitler's order, that both she and Frau Scholtz-

Klink were accorded the honour of being admitted to membership of the

Academy of German Law3. Dr. Eben- Servaes quickly produced an

article for the January 1ß37 edition of the news -letter of the

National Women's Leadership, in which she explained in detail the

opportunities which remained open for women with legal training;

these were to be found in the women's organisations, the welfare

service, in marriage and family law, in the Party's courses in

political education, and in all cases in which women or children might

need legal guidance. Dr. Eben- Servaes emphasised that the female

lawyer's ability was not in doubt, but that she would nevertheless be

of greatest service to the community in those areas especially

1. Elfriede Eggener, "Die Aufgabe der Rechtswahrerin ", FK, July 1939,
P. 5.

2. BDC, answers to a questionnaire for the NSDAP Reichsleitung. Letters

of 7 and 22 January, 1942, reveal that she continued her private
legal practice in the face of rules banning outside employment for
members of the Party Leadership.

3. HA, Reel 13, folder 254, "Partei -Archiv ", November 1936.
BA, R61/168, letter from Ilse Eben -Servaes to Herr Loyal at the
Akademie far Deutsches Recht, 12 December, 1938.
 306.

concerned with women's affairs, leaving fields of less immediate

relevance to women to her male colleagues1.

Dr. Eben- Servaes was particularly anxious that Hitler's

ruling should not discourage girls from studying law; neither, she

stressed, should the unfortunate fact that a number of the older

women lawyers now faced some hardship, given that there was in fact

a surplus of male lawyers in the older age -group, act as a disincentive.

By way of positive encouragement, she pointed out, in August 1937:

"it is estimated that in two or three years' time there will be a

severe shortage of male lawyers, which will presumably work to the

advantage of the woman lawyer ". It had already, she continued, been

possible to absorb more or less all of the junior women lawyers into

the economic system or into the administration of the Frauenwerk,

andihis latter area of the women's organisations would, she

predicted, have a positive need for even more law graduates, as it

expanded2. Her views were borne out when, after just two years, Dr.

Donke of the Party's section for academic affairs announced that

"the sharp decline in the number of young women lawyers is particularly

undesirable... ", since the tasks for which women were especially

suited, in the welfare services and in women's and youth organisations,

had proliferated rapidly. Dr. Donke went as far as to express the

opinion that if, as was being planned, a special kind of court was to

be established to deal with legal problems arising from family life,

it might even be desirable to bring women back into court work, since

1. Ilse Eben -Servaes, "Die Frau als Rechtswahrerin ", Nachrichtendienst

der Reichsfrauenfiihrerin, January 1937, pp. 6 -7. This article was
also published in FK, January 1937, p. 13.

2. HA, Reel 13, folder 253, "Rundschreiben Nr. FW 76/37", from Ilse
Eben -Servaes to her representatives in the Gaue, 12 August, 1937.
 307.
they had a particularly valuable contribution to make in this areal.

The restriction placed on women lawyers in 1936 was actually

an exception to the trend of policy towards women in the professions

in that year, which paralleled the change in official utterances

about and attitudes to girl students. The reason behind this was

perfectly clear: by 1936 it had become apparent that, with a few

exceptions, such as dentistry2, the surpluses there had been in all

professions in the early 1930s had been eliminated, and that there

would very soon even be a serious shortage of candidates for some,

if not all, of them. The demands of the Four Year Plan - conceived

in August 1936 - for skilled and qualified personnel from all

professions çuickly made themselves apparent, and, in the ensuing

anxiety on the part of the Government to provide staff - on a scale

which they had shortsightedly failed to predict when drawing up the

new industrial policy - the appeal for more recruits for the

professions was directed specifically at women as well as men.

"To- day ", asserted a writer in the V8lkischer Beobachter, "we can

no longer do without the woman doctor, lawyer, economist and teacher

in our professional life "3.

To reinforce the new attitude towards professional women, the

National Women's Leadership began to increase its contacts with them

and interest in their activities. In June 1936, an agreement was

reached between Frau Scholtz -Klink's office and the NSLB for close

collaboration on matters of mutual interest, while a section to deal

1. IfZ, MA 205, NSDAP/HA-Wissenschaft, Dr. W. Donke, "Der Rechtswahrer",

cutting from Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 August, 1939.

2. "Aufhebung der Sperre des Neuzugangs zum zahnärztlichen Studium

und zum Dentistenberuf ", DWEuV 1937, no. 200, 22 March, 1937,
p. 187.

3. "Die Akademikerin von heute ", VB, 4 September, 1936.

 308.

with "academic questions" was established in the Reichsfrauenftihrunp

on 1 July, 1936. From about this time, Frau Scholtz -Klink made a

practice of addressing meetings of girl students and women lecturers',

groups to whom she had formerly paid little or no attention. Some

kind of justification for this initial neglect of academically-

talented women by the Nazi women's organisation, and the vivid

contrast with it of the concern which began to be shown for them from

1936, was felt to be necessary; but the version put out in the DFW's

magazine rather lacked conviction. It admitted that it was difficult

to explain why professional women and particularly women lecturers in

universities and colleges, had not been welcomed into the work of

the women's organisations from the very start; the reason. was,

however - so the official account ran - that "the new tasks flor these

wome7 could be undertaken for the first time only after they had

developed organically from the practical work "2. The significance

of this was that intellectual women as a group had had no

opportunity to influence and shape the development of the women's

work of the nation in the first years after 1933, and so the pattern

had been designed by women who were regarded as being more

genuinely representative of the mass of women in the nation, and

who, more important, were unquestioningly loyal to the NSDAP.

But even as the demands upon human resources being made by

the Four Year Plan became apparent, influential members of both

Party and Government continued to be exercised by the question of the

1. "Ffnf Jahre Reichsfrauenftihrung", FK, February 1939, PP. 4 -5.

2. "Der Aufruf der Reichsfrauenftihrerin an die Dozentinnen ", FK,

February 1938, p. 3.
 309.

place of women in professional life. Those who though that Frick's

assertion that there was not to be a general campaign against

women in the professions, made in 1933, had settled the matter may

have begun to have doubts after Hitler's restriction on entry to

the practice of law by women in 1936. The new and comprehensive

law relating to the civil service which was published in January

1937 had little to say about women; it merely reiterated the

1933 provisions for the possibility of dismissing a married woman

official either at her own request or if her financial position

would be secure without her own salary1. Five months later, an

amendment was introduced to exempt the large number of employees

of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs from it as a group, and to

allow for the re- employment of women whose financial position had

changed for the worse to a significant extent after leaving work2.

This tinkering with the law, along with the absence of any clear

guidelines for the employment of women in official positions

generally, can only have increased the uncertainty that already

existed.

As had been the case with the debate about the place of

women in the legal profession, so here again it was Hess's office

which brought the matter to Hitler's personal attention. Sommer

wrote to Lammers in May 1937 asking for a reply to a question he

had asked some time before, without receiving an answer, namely, did

Hitler think that women ought still to be appointed to senior

positions in the civil service?3. Clearly, the Party's central office

1. "Deutsches Beamtengesetz ", RGB, 1937 I, 26 January, 1937, p. 51.

2. "Verordnung zur Durchftihrung des Deutschen Beamtengesetzes ", RGB

1937 I, 29 June, 1937, p. 676.

3. BA, R4311/427, letter from Sommer to Lammers, 4 May, 1937.

 310.

in Munich, under the leadership of Hess, with Bormann as his

deputy, was determined to try to hold the National Socialist

Government to original Party doctrine now that it was in power,

irrespective of the needs of the economy or of the staffing

requirements of the professions; the holding of high office in the

State was, according to Nazi ideology, a singularly masculine

function. In this case as in the one affecting the legal profession,

Hitler responded, in his role as leader of the Party, that, as a

matter of principle, he wished to see only men appointed to posts

in the higher civil service, although he added that exceptions

might be made for individual women in positions connected with the

administration of the welfare servicesl.

Once again it fell to the Ministry of the Interior to moderate

the Party's policy in favour of women, as it had done in 1933. This

time, Pfundtner, writing on behalf of Frick, proposed that the

fields of education and health, as well as social welfare, be

designated areas in which women could be appointed to high-ranking

official positions2, and Lammers incorporated them into his statement

of the final decision, which he then communicated to Hess's office in

July 19373. A month later, Pfundtner informed the other Reich

Ministries of the ruling in a confidential circular4. Such was the

secrecy involved that a member of Frick's staff felt it necessary to

1. Ibid., letter from Lammers to Hess's office, 8 June, 1937.

2. Ibid., letter from Pfundtner, 18 June, 1937.

3. Ibid., letter from Lammers to Hess's office, 25 July, 1937.

4. Ibid., letter from Pfundtner to the Reich Ministries, 24 August, 1937.

 311.

ask Lammers if there was any objection to the content of the new

order's being intimated to Frau Scholtz- Klinkt, who, as the chief

representative of the women of the nation, should presumably have been

considered an interested party. Lammers replied at the end of

January 1938 that there was no objection to Frau Scholtz -Klink's being

informed about the order2, but the fact that she had not been

automatically included in the original, confidential list throws light

on how little real influence she had, even in matters of special

concern to women, in spite of her title.

As it happened, representations on behalf of the Reichsfrauen-

fljhrerin were not, in this case, necessary, since she revealed in a

letter to Bormann that she had known for some time about the order

issued by Frick which "forbids the employment of women in the higher

civil service ", as she rather wrongly put it. Hess apparently had

explained fully the circumstances of the decision to her, at her own

request, and so she was well aware that there were cases in which

exceptions to the ruling would be allowed. The purpose of her letter

to Bormann was to press for an exception to be made in the case of a

talented woman astronomer, Dr. Margarete Gässow, who had been proposed

by her male superior for promotion to a permanent, senior position

in the Berlin Observatory. Frau Scholtz-Klink approached Bormann on

this occasion after the nomination of Dr. Gtissow had been rejected

by Rust, as Minister of Education, because she was a woman and therefore

not eligible for promotion to a post of this kind, according to the

1. Ibid., letter from Dr. Schätze to Lammers, 17 December, 1937.

2. Ibid., letter from Lammers to the Minister of the Interior, 31

January, 1938.
 312.

order of 24 August, 19371.

For the most part, Frau Scholtz-Klink was thoroughly docile,

accepting Party edicts and faithfully explaining and justifying them

to the women whose leader she was; this had been true even when

Hitler's decision against admitting women to legal practice in the

courts had been announced. Now, however, in the case of Margarete

Gtissow, she made a rare and rebellious outburst against a situation

where "a woman cannot obtain a position because she is a woman,

although she is, by reason of her ability and achievements, suited to

it ". Frau Scholtz -Klink asserted that the man who had been suggested

by Rust as an alternative candidate for the post had been rejected by

Dr. Guthnick, the head of the Observatory, because "his accomplishments

bore no relation to Dr. Gtissow's "; in addition, five astronomers

besides Dr. Guthnick supported Dr. Güssow's candidature. The Reichs-

frauenfIhrerin openly poured scorn on the way that a gifted woman

with an international reputation was being denied the opportunity to

realise her full potential, but at the same time voiced deep anxiety

about what she saw as an alarming precedent. She referred also to

the "growing tendency to deny gifted and able women the chance of

advancement ", which had convinced her that it was now necessary "to

put this matter, too, to the FUhrer, from the women's point of view,

so that there can be a fundamental clarification of it ". In

particular, the question of the position of women on university staffs

was one which she would have liked to broach to Hitler; but the problem

was that the Reichsfrauenftlhrerin was never given the chance to discuss

matters with Hitler - which is amazing, if her title was supposed to

1. Ibid., letter from Frau Scholtz -Klink to Bormann, 24 January, 1938.

 313.

mean anything - and so she had to depend on Bormann to represent her

views to him1.

Given Bormann's adherence to Party ideology, as Hess's second -

in-command at the Brown House, it was unlikely that Frau Scholtz -Klink

would find in him her champion to represent the women's cause to

Hitler. As it turned out, Bormann was laid low by influenza in

January 1938, and so he passed Frau Scholtz -Klink's letter on to

Lammers, with the request that he edit it, submit it to Hitler, and

find out his decision. There was, apparently, no need to express a

point of view; Hitler's opinion was what counted2. It was three

weeks before Bormann received his answer, and then it came in the

bald statement that there was no objection to Dr. Güssow's appointment,

with no explanation of the decision given, and no mention made of the

more general points Frau Scholtz -Klink had raised3; these had,

presumably, been eliminated in the process of editing the letter.

Although she succeeded in her campaign on this occasion, Frau

Scholtz -Klink had had to take a firm stand, and the broader issues

were no nearer to being clarified. If there was such difficulty in

achieving promotion for Margarete Güssow, there can have been little

chance for those who were less assiduous in showing an acceptable

degree of enthusiasm for the regime and its affiliates. Margarete

Güssow was a member of the Party, having joined it on 1 April, 1933,

and the NS- Frauenschaft in November 1935. She was also a member of

the National Physical Education Association, the NS-Volkswohlfahrt,

1. Ibid., letter from Frau Scholtz-Klink to Bormann, 24 January, 1938.

2. Ibid., letter from Bormann to Lammers, 29 January, 1938.

3. Ibid., letter from Lammers to Bormann, 21 February, 1938.

 314.

and other, smaller groups1. Thus, she was classed as "politically

reliable". In spite of the difficulties surrounding her new

appointment, she was given pride of place in the DFW's magazine in

February 1939, as an example of what women who were both talented

and reliable could achieve. In the article, all that was said about

the actual appointment was that Hitler personally had been responsible

for it2; it was very clear that German women were not supposed to know

how limited their opportunities had become in some areas of the

professions, at the whim of Hitler and his small inner circle of

senior Ministers and Party bosses.

But the article on Margarete Gitssow, which included an

interview with her, seems to have been less a device on Frau Scholtz-

Klink's part for deluding German women than a part of a campaign

which she had begun to wage unilaterally, as leader of the nation's

women. The Government had announced a pressing need for professional

people in 1936, and Frau Scholtz -Klink took this at face value

and accepted that - as had been said - it applied to women as well

as men. In any case, she had a growing need for talented and

highly educated women in her own organisations. Well aware of the

dangers of giving these women power and influence, she aimed to

utilise their abilities, but at the same time to tie them into the

women's organisations in such a way that it was clear that they were

a valuable part of them, but only one among others equally valuable.

She had begun this process of "underpinning our practical work with a

theoretical basis ", as she and her advisers liked to saya, in 1936

1. BDC, File on Margarete Gtissow.

2. Report in FK, February 1939, p. 2.

3. "Der Aufruf der Reichsfrauenfiihrerin an die Dozentinnen ", FK,

February 1938, p. 4

Ilse Eben -Servaes, "Wissen ist uns Verpflichtung", FK, op. cit., p. 13.
 315.

by making contact with groups of professional women and, especially,

women in the universities. The next step was to create a section

within the DFW - alongside the sections for political education,

German culture and training in domestic science and child -care -

for what she called "academic work ", in the summer of 19371. In

June of that year, a circular went out to the Gau NS- Frauenschaft

leaders announcing that Ilse Eben- Servaes had been chosen to

lead this new section, and asking that "a suitable woman graduate"

be selected to head a section for "academic work" in each Gau

office

Dr. Eben Servaes described the main task of her new section

as "the construction of a bridge between learning and practical work ",

by which the women involved in both these kinds of activity could

benefit from exchanging ideas and experiences. There would be, for

example, study groups in which women on the staff of the DFW's

section "domestic economy -national economy" would meet the small

number of women who were lecturers in economics; in other groups,

doctors and members of the child -care courses put on by the DFW

could discuss matters of mutual interest. Women on the staff of

Arts faculties were assigned the area of "culture and education"

for making contact with women outside the academic world. These

activities were to take place not only at the national level but also

in the Gaue, organised by the appointed representative; it was hoped

also to begin study groups in the smaller unit of the Kreis3.

1. Loc. cit.

2. HA, Reel 13, folder 253, DFW Reichsstelle, "Rundschreiben Nr.

Fat 51/37 ", 18 June, 1937.

3. Ilse Eben -Servaes, loc. cit.

 316.

To bring the women of the DFW into closer touch with women

in all sections of the professions, the organisation's magazine

began to feature articles about women's place in them. The more

contentious areas, particularly, were given wide coverage in such

articles as "Woman as lawyer ", "The tasks of women in the law ",

"The woman doctor ", "The tasks of women in economic science ", all

of which emphasised that the work of the professions was now being

conducted in a new spirit which considered the good of the nation

above all, with the interests of individuals of secondary

importance. In addition, women were assigned special areas of

interest within each profession: child -care and all matters of

racial health and population growth were women's chief concern

in medicine; in law, it was matters connected with the family and

youth; and, with housewives the largest consumers in the home

market, women economists ought, it was said, to have a special

interest in price movements and patterns of consumptionl.

The climax of all this activity was a conference held at the

beginning of 1938, to which Frau Scholtz -Klink invited twenty -five

women lecturers at universities and teacher- training colleges. The

programme for the first day consisted of a tour of a new training

centre for domestic science and child -care, a talk by Dr. Eben- Servaes

1. Ilse Eben -Servaes, "Die Frau als Rechtswahrerin ", FK, January 1937,
p. 13.

Wiltraut von Briinneck, "Die Aufgaben der Frau im Recht ", FK,
November 1937, pp. 9 -10.

Ursula Romann, "Die Arztin ", FK, op. cit., pp. 8 -9.

Marilese Cremer, "Mitarbeit der Frau in der Wirtschaftswissenschaft ",

FK, op. cit., p. 11.
 317.

about the purpose of the section for "academic work" in the

DPW, followed by a discussion whose subject was "Women in research

at the universities ". Frau Scholtz -Klink herself spoke briefly to

the assembled company, and then left matters in the capable hands

of Dr. Eben- Servaes1. Two lecturers from the technical university in

Aachen wrote subsequently of the pleasure and value they had

derived from this meeting, secure now in the knowledge that "we are

needed: ", after the uncertainties which had surrounded the position

of women in academic life. In addition, the isolation they had

felt, working away in their own university, had now largely been

dispelled by meeting colleagues from other institutions, many of

them for the first time2. Frau Scholtz -Klink, then, had shown that,

in her view, there was a special place in the life of the nation for

women on the staff of a university, although she still hoped to

have some clarification of the Party's view of the position of

these women, preferably by Hitler himself3.

In fact, women were still being appointed to positions on

university staffs, which indicates that no attempt was being made

to phase them out altogether. In the autumn of 1938, Dr. Maria Lipp

was promoted to the Chair of Chemistry in the technical university at

Aachen. This was the first time a woman professor had been appointed

in a technical university. Professor Lipp had begun her lecturing

career in the 1920s, managing to survive the purges of the post -1933

1. "Die deutsche Frau in Lehre und Forschung ", FK, February 1938, pp.
4 -5.

2. Gertrud Savelsberg and Doris Korn, "Rttckblick auf die Tagung der
Deutschen Dozentinnen in Berlin 3.- 6.1.1938 ", FK, February 1938,
p. 12.

3. BA, op. cit., letter from Gertrud Scholtz -Klink to Bormann, 24

January, 1938.
 318.

period, although she was not a Party member1. Earlier in 1938,

Gertrud Ferchland, a Party member since May 1933, had been

appointed as a professor at the Schneidemühl teacher- training

college2, and at the beginning of 1939 Dr. Maria K8sters became

a senior lecturer in dentistry in the medical faculty of Munich

University3. She was certainly not appointed as a Party member;

but she did join the NSDAP within a year of her appointment4.

One Party stalwart to be promoted was Charlotte Lorenz, who moved

to a senior lecturing position in political science and economics

at the University of Berlin from the post of adviser in the

National Statistical Records Offices in October 1940. She had joined

the Party in May 1933, and was also a member of the NSLB, the

Dozentenbund, the RDB, the NSV, and a number of other groups in

addition6. In the light of such developments, the Frankfurter

Zeitung observed:

"In the initial uncertainty about the working of National

Socialist principles in practice, the widespread conviction
prevailed that in the new State women would sooner or later
be phased out of the professions, and particularly out of
the academic life. So far, this expectation has not been
realised. On the contrary.... "7.

1. "Zur Lage der deutschen Frau ", Die Frau, November 1938, p. 98.

BDC, Maria Lipp's NSLB card, dated 1.10.38.

2. Ibid., Gertrud Ferchland's NSLB card, dated 1.1.37.

"Personalnachriohten ", DWEuV 1938, 5 February, 1938, p 57

3. "Zur Lage der deutschen Frau", Die Frau, February 1939, p. 271.

4. BDC, Maria K8sters' Party Membership and NSLB cards.

5. Stockhorst, op. cit., p. 276.

6. BDC, Partei -Kanzlei Korrespondenz, and Charlotte Lorenz's Party

Membership and NSLB cards.

7. "Dozentinnen", FZ, 4 February, 1938.

 319.

The change in official attitudes to women in the professions

which had become apparent in 1936 became even more marked by 1938,

in spite of the two decisions made by Hitler to the disadvantage of

women in the interim. The growing shortage of male candidates for

the professions, eventually foreseen in 1936, was beginning to make

itself felt, even before the outbreak of the Second World War. In

teaching, it was reported in November 1937 that women's prospects

had improved considerably: whereas only nineteen women had been

given permanent jobs in Prussian girls' senior schools in the years

1932 -35, twenty -five had been appointed in 1936 alone, with thirteen

probationary women teachers also found places in that year1. A

year later, the position of male teachers had improved to such an

extent that, for the first time for over a decade, every applicant

was found a place. This at once raised the prospect of a shortage,

which, it was estimated, would become acute from about 1942, when

those teachers born in the 1880s - a decade with an extremely high

birth -rate - began to retire. It was estimated that there would be

enough women teachers, given the number of applicants in 1938, to

supply the needs of the senior schools for some time to come, even

allowing for the decline in men's numbers2. Far from altering the

ratio of male to female teachers in girls' senior schools radically

in favour of men - as had been intended - the Government was now

obliged to turn increasingly to women to fill these positions; the

1. Luise Raulf, "Frau und Naturwissenschaft ", FK, November 1937,

13.

2. "Studienräte und Studienrätinnen an höheren Schulen ", Die Frau,

November 1938, p. 94.
 320.

census returns show that even in 1939, long before the shortage of

male teachers was expected to be at its worst, women constituted

35% of all persons involved in education of one kind or another,

which was an increase of 1% over the 1933 figure1.

Teaching, of course, had always been more or less approved

by the Nazis as a sphere of activity for women. But now, in 1938,

the Government awoke to the fact that it would have to make good the

shortages of male candidates throughout the professional spectrum

from the significant reserve of candidates among the women of the

nation, even in areas which were, from the Party's point of view,

unsuitable for women. In February 1938, the Frankfurter Zeitunp

reported that women doctors, economists, scientists and "even women

lawyers" were now regarded favourably in high places2. Dr.

Margarete Esch, a careers officer at Berlin University, observed that

there were widespread opportunities for women doctors; significantly,

she mentioned possibilities for them as medical officers of health

and as advisers in administrative positions as well as the fields

normally assigned to them by the Nazis, in the care of women and

children. Prospects were still limited in dentistry, since there

was a continuing surplus of candidates, but there were now

opportunities for women in veterinary medicine, and in medical research

of all kinds. In the technical and scientific professions, "which

had ", said Dr. Esch, "been considered a male preserve for a long

time ", women were increasingly being employed because of a shortage of

men; in fact, women chemists, physicists, engineers and biologists

1. Calculated from figures in St.J., 1941/42, p. 38.

2. FZ, loc. cit.

 321.

were finding positions in industry or in research without any

difficulty. In spite of the limitations on women's participation

in the legal profession, there was a constant need for women

lawyers in the organisations, in the employment exchanges and in

administrative positions; the same was true for women economists1.

The 1939 census showed that 15.5% of all persons employed in

administration at the national and local level, including the

administration of justice, were women, which was an increase of

2
4% on the 1 9 33 fi gore This was hardly to have been expected if

the restrictions placed on women in the civil service and the legal

profession had been rigorously applied.

The outbreak of war in September 1939, and the withdrawal of

men from the professions into the armed forces, made the country's

dependence on women very much greater. In recognition of this, a

national agency for advising women graduates about vacancies in

positions in the administration, the economy and the social services

was opened in Berlin on 1 October, 19393. But even in October

1939 reports came in from all over Germany of shortages in all areas

of the professions. There were not enough doctors generally4, and in

Trier, for example, the situation was extremely serious, with only

thirty -four doctors practising where there had previously been

seventy-four5. In teaching, the overall situation was so bad that

1. Margarete Esch, "Die Aussichten des Frauenstudiums ", FZ, 19 March,

1939.

2. St.J., loc. cit.

3. Report in Die Frau, December 1939, p. 85.

4. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750069, BziL, "Kulturelle Gebiete ", 13

October, 1939.

5. Ibid., frame 2- 750043, BziL, 9 October, 1939.

 322.

retired teachers and married women who had resigned were being

asked to return to work1, but even so the situation remained

extremely serious2. In the following month, it was reported that

schoolboys and schoolgirls in the senior classes were being

encouraged to enrol for the new crash courses for elementary

school-teaching3. There was also a serious and growing shortage

of lawyers, particularly of barristers and judges, so that the

Ministry of Justice devised a less lengthy training course for

junior members of the profession; even so, it was estimated that

the number of counsel in Berlin courts would drop by anything

up to 40% in the near future4. A month later, in November 1939, it

was decided to shorten the period of training for intending lawyers

as well, whether they were being called up for active service or

not, in view of the general shortage of personnel in both the

legal profession and the administrations. Even the Party eventually

had to make sacrifices: in August 1940, the order went out that

teachers should be asked to attend Party meetings in school hours

only if their absence would prejudice the Party's interests, and that

1. Ibid., frame 2- 750042.

2. Ibid., frame 2- 750087, BziL, 16 October, 1939. Anxiety on this

matter featured in a number of reports in the following month,
on 10, 17 and 24 November, 1939.

3. Ibid., frame 2- 750197, BziL, 6 November, 1939.

4. Ibid., frame 2- 750072, BziL, 13 October, 1939.

5. Ibid., frames 2-750073/4, BziL, 10 November, 1939.

 323.
Party events in which large numbers of teachers would be

involved should be held in the school holidays1.

The seriousness of this situation did not deter the

NS-Rechtswahrerbund from complaining to Frick at the end of 1939

about the appointment of women lawyers, who had originally hoped

to work in the courts, to permanent positions in the senior

ranks of the civil service; although this had been precisely what

Freisler had been trying to achieve, after Hitler's order of

August 1936 restricting the scope of women lawyers, the NSRB

expressed the opinion that only men should be appointed to such

positions. Frick discussed the matter with Hess, and then

produced a draft circular in which he explained that Hitler's

decision that only men should be appointed to senior civil service

positions had allowed for exceptions to be made in cases where the

post was one to which a woman would be particularly suited. He

went on to say that

"In a rational administration, where there are several

possibilities, the most suitable must be chosen. This
rule must also hold good for appointments to administrative
positions."

From this point he argued that if it was felt that a woman would be

a better choice for a particular position, even a permanent post in

the higher civil service, then she ought certainly to be appointed.

Her suitability, he added, might seem the greater in view of the

growing shortage of administrators2. Once again, Frick appears to

1. BA, NSD 3/5, Verfiigungen, Anordnungen, Bekanntgaben, vol. 1,

"Teilnahme von Lehrern und Lehrerinnen an Veranstaltungen und
Schulungstagungen der Partei - B. 60/40 vom 14.8.40", p. 129.

2. BA, R4311/427, draft circular signed by Frick, January 1940

(exact date not given).
 324.

have been concerned that doctrinaire Party policy should not be

applied in a fully comprehensive manner without any thought to

practical consequences; as head of a large Government department,

he, after all, had to ensure that the administrative machinery of the

nation worked effectively, particularly in war -time. If there were

not suitable men available to fill the gaps in the civil service

caused by conscription, then, if it was to continue to function,

women with the necessary training and qualifications would have to

be brought in.

The draft circular went first to Hess, who passed it on to

Lammers for his opinion. Lammers, who still employed women in

responsible positions in the Chancellery', replied that the sense of

the circular was not, as far as he could see, in conflict with the

ruling Hitler had given in July 1937, about the appointment of

women to senior posts in the civil service. He appears not to

have consulted Hitler on this occasion2, which probably prevented

objections from being raised. Frick was, after all, allowing a

much wider interpretation of the original order than Hitler's ruling

would have permitted. With no obstacles raised, the circular went

out in final form to all the Reich Ministers and senior officials

of the Party in May 19403. Already, in the same month, a law had been

1. Ibid., demonstrates that lists of officials to whom classified

documents were to be shown include some women, e.g. on 19 July,
1935, 18 September, 1937, 17 March, 1938, 3 January, 1940.
Three women (all unmarried) figure on the lists for all of these
dates, with an additional three for the last one.

2. Ibid., letter from Lammers to Hess, 9 April, 1940.

3. Ibid., circular from Frick to the highest authorities of the Reich.

 325.

passed to the effect that women in the service of the State who

married "need not be dismissed if their maintenance seemed guaranteed

in the long term from the size of their family income ". Women who had

resigned or been dismissed for this reason could be reinstated,

according to this new law1. The wording of the act suggests that this

was intended as a war -time measure, at least in the first instance, and

not as a statement of a fundamental change of principle. It was

still possible for a woman to request to leave the civil service on

marriage, and to receive severance pay, as a statement by the Minister

of Finance confirmed even in February 19412, at a time when it would

have been more practical to discourage women from giving up work,

given the chronic shortage of personnel.

As early as February 1940, it was reported that in many

areas of the Reich local government was nearing a state of collapse

on account of the shortage of personnel. To try to avert chaos, a

number of district governors were beginning to appoint women to

manage departments in their offices3. But such moves were to be regarded

as emergency measures, and in areas of less pressing need women

were to continue to be restricted by the orders Hitler had given

in 1936 and 1937. Frau Scholtz -Klink discovered this in 1942 when

she supported the application of Dr. Ilse Esdorn, a Party member

since 19374, for promotion to the senior civil service post of

1. "2. VO über Massnahmen auf dem Gebiet des Beamtenrechts ", RGB,
1940 I, 3 May, 1940, P. 732.

2. BA, op. cit., Reichshaushalts - und Besoldungsblatt Nr. 6,

"Abfindung der weiblichen Beamten bei Verheiratung", 27 February,
1941, p. 90.

3. IfZ, MA 441/1, frame 2- 750855, MadR, "Erneute Meldungen zum

Personalmangel bei den Landratsämtern ", 19 February, 1940.

4. BDC, Ilse Esdorn's Party Membership card.

 326.

of scientific adviser in the research institute where she worked

as a botanist. Her candidature was also supported by the Director

of the institute and by the National Forestry Office, but a

dispensation was required for the appointment in view of Hitler's

ruling of July 1937. Frau Scholtz -Klink therefore approached an

official of the Party office, Dr. Klopfer, who put the matter to

Lammers with the recommendation that Frick's circular of 1940,

allowing for the appointment of women "in suitable cases ", did not

apply in this instance1. Dr. Klopfer received a prompt answer

from an official in the Chancellery, to the effect that Hitler's

order of 1937 was still in force as he had since voiced no other

opinion on the matter, and that the post for which Dr. Esdorn was

being recommended hardly came within the scope of the exceptions

to which he had agreed. For this reason, the question of the

shortage of senior civil servants, mentioned in Frick's circular,

had no bearing on the matter2.

Epilogue

It is hard to make a reasonable projection of what would

have happened in peacetime to those women brought into professional

positions as a result of the war, if Germany had won in 1941 or 1942.

No doubt their short -term prospects would have been good, with

male casualties and the low numbers of male students during the war.

1. BA, op. cit., copy of notes about the case of Ilse Esdorn, 5
February, 1942, and of a letter from Dr. Klopfer to Lammers, 18
February, 1942.

2. Ibid., letter from Lammer's office to Dr. Klopfer, 11 March, 1942.

 327.

But in the long term - as with employment in general - a new

generation of qualified men would presumably have been given

precedence, for reasons of population policy particularly. And

yet, while the war had precipitated the need for professionally-

qualified women, the demand was already there before it broke out.

If there had been no war, there would still have been a considerable

demand for such women, given the expansion, and intended further

enlargement, of the Party's own organisations. Indeed, women were

supposed to be restricted to matters involving women, children,

marriage and the family; but to be able to cope with the administration

of the women's organisations, and to provide the training, medical

treatment and legal advice necessary in them it was essential that

girls be admitted to universities in large numbers and given some

practical professional training after graduation. The Party's view

was that women should be organised by women - even if they were

always ultimately subordinate to male authority - and so the most

capable women had to be found for this function. ?rau Scholtz -Klink

came gradually to the conclusion that women with an academic

education were eminently suitable here, as long as they allowed

themselves to be wholeheartedly drawn into the women's work of the

nation, and did not cut themselves off from members of their own sex

who were in other occupations - particularly the housewife and mother.

Thus, a division was created between men and women in the

same profession, after the massing together of all teachers, doctors,

lawyers at first, in 1933, regardless of sex. This can, perhaps

ironically, be seen as a return to the pre -Nazi system - the one the

Nazis so roundly condemned - in which a strong element of feminism

led to the creation of separate organisations for women who

 328.

nevertheless worked alongside men. The appointment of women

representatives in the professional organisations as early as 1934

shows acceptance of the de facto situation, that women were quite

firmly entrenched in the professions, even if positive encouragement

was not given to them until autumn 1936; but it is clear that, almost

from the start of the Nazi regime, "politically reliable ", or even

neutral, women were not to be driven out of the professions. However

meagre the gains of the 1920s may have seemed to the feminists, they

were the result of long years of campaigning and were not to be

eradicated overnight on the whim of a governing élite whose ideology

bore little relation to economic or social reality outside the

abnormal conditions of a world depression.

No doubt the fundamental conflict between Party doctrine and

the needs of the country would have continued, if the Nazis had

survived, with men like Frick - who had to get the results - trying

to circumvent orders issued by people removed from the reality of

day -to-day government, people like Hitler and Bormann. The case of

Ilse Esdorn well illustrates the mindlessness of the bureaucrats who

unquestioningly accepted edicts from above, however irrational or

impractical they might be, while the increasing use of qualified women

by some local authorities for jobs normally done by men shows that those

remote from the centre were often prepared to act in what seemed to them

the most appropriate way, without feeling the need to ask the central

Government or the Party whether there were doctrinal objections to

their method.
 329.

CHAPTER SIX

The Nazi Organisation of Women

Introduction

In contrast with the admission of women to formal political

activity and even to prominent positions in the political parties

of the left, the centre, and, to an extent, the right after 1918,

the NSDAP's first general meeting in January 1921 unanimously passed

the resolution that "Women cannot be admitted to the leadership or the

executive committee of the Party ". It is recorded that those women

who attended the meeting supported this decision enthusiastically1.

Twenty -one years later, in the depths of the Second World War, Adolf

Hitler was to boast that he had not only adhered to this resolution

in the intervening period, but even surpassed it: "In no local section

of the Party has a woman ever had the right to hold even the smallest

post... "2. At no time during the existence of the Nazi Party did the

male leadership waver from its implacable opposition to feminism;

indeed, it claimed that this did not mean that the Party favoured the

subordination of women to men, but rather that there were men's affairs

and women's affairs, and that the latter did not include active

participation in political life. But in reality the result of this

"equivalent but different" theory was that while women might exercise

some control over their own organisations and activities, all that they

did was required to remain strictly within the confines imposed on them

by the exclusively male leadership of the Party.

Thus, it would be totally misleading to call any organisation

1. G. Franz Willing, Die Hitlerbewegung, Hamburg, 1962, p. 82.

2. Hitler's Table -Talk, no. 126, 26 January, 1942 (evening), p. 252.

 330.

of Nazi women a "Nazi Women's Movement ", for such a designation

would imply that the specifically female activity that there

undoubtedly was within the NSDAP had feminist aims and enjoyed a

considerable degree of independence from Nazi men. The latter was

certainly not the case, and if there were manifestations of

feminism among the early female supporters of Hitler, these were

finally eradicated once the immediate aim of the Party - the winning

of political control in Germany - was achieved. A Nazi women's

organisation, in fact, came into being only because it fulfilled

certain needs of the male -dominated Party. It developed and

became an integral and even essential part of Nazi Germany, but

always in order to perform a particular function in the interests of

the Party as a whole; if any benefit accrued to individual women,

or even to groups of women, this was only ever incidental to the

benefit derived by the Party. In this respect, the NSDAP was to

some extent similar to both socialist parties, the SPD and the KPD,

although it differed markedly from them in keeping women strictly out

of the purely political struggle.

There were four distinct phases in the development of the

Nazi women's organisation. In the first, in the later 1920s, there

was some systematisation of what had begun as apparently spontaneous

female "assistance" to the Storm Troopers. The formal takeover by

the Party of the main group involved in this, in 1928, began a new

period which was to last only until autumn 1931, when the Party

reorganised its women's section in order to be prepared for the final

assault on the Weimar democracy. The subordination of all other

activity to the single -minded aim of seizing and then consolidating

power allowed the development within the women's section - as within

 331.

the Party as a whole - of conflicting groupings and points of view,

which were to give rise to considerable confusion and finally to a

power struggle in winter 1933 -34. The resulting victory for those

who favoured unity and harmony above all within the Party and its

member -organisations, strictly under Hitler's unchallenged leadership,

brought forward Gertrud Scholtz -Klink as the leader who was to

represent German womanhood from February 1934 until the end of the

Third Reich. Her emergence ushered in a new phase, that of the

detailed development of an integrated women's organisation which

would carry out the will of the Party unquestioningly and involve

German women in those activities considered suitable for them - and

useful to the Party's political purpose at any given time. Constant

propaganda managed most of the time to disguise the fact that the

intricate administrative network evolved by Frau Scholtz -Klink and

her staff was to some extent a facade, behind which there was

relatively little real activity: the mass of German women did not want

to be organised, and their passive resistance to attempts to involve

the housebound housewife, above all, in the "women's work of the

nation" ensured that the Nazi women's organisation remained very much

a minority concern.

A. The Organisation of Nazi Women before the " Machtübernahme"

The nature of the early "assistance" given by women to the

SA was completely in keeping with Nazi views about the role of women:

it mainly consisted of first aid for those "comrades" wounded in

street brawls and the provision of bowls of soup for indigent Party

members. This was done on a local and completely spontaneous basis

at first, without either central direction or planning of even a

 332.

short -term naturel. The first sign of organisation in this area

came with the founding of the "German Women's Order (of the Red

Swastika)" (DFO) by Elsbeth Zander2 in September 1923. This

völkisch (racist -nationalist) group, which was formally affiliated

to no political party, began to support and give aid to local Nazi

groups, on its own initiative3. The value of this activity and the

beginnings of the DFO's rationalisation on a national basis were

recognised by the formal accrediting of the DFO as the women's

auxiliary of the NSDAP at the 1926 Party Congress at Weimar. Elsbeth

Zander, now official leader of the DFO4, wanted an even closer

connection with the NSDAP, and at the end of 1927 she wrote to

Hitler asking him to place the DFO under the direct jurisdiction

of the Nazi Party5; this was effected in 19286.

The DFO was now given formal regulations by the Party; these

described its aims as: the removal of women from the disorders

of party politics; the training of women in all aspects of nursing

and welfare work; the affording of assistance to large families, to

political prisoners, and to Germans abroad - especially those in the

"occupied areas" taken from the Reich at Versailles; and the training

of girls to become "racially conscious" German women and responsible

1. "Nationalsozialistische Frauenarbeit ", FK, April 1937, p. 6.

2. Elsbeth Zander was born in 1888, remained unmarried, and joined

the NSDAP on 1 April, 1926, with the low membership number of
33511. Information from BDC, her Party membership cards.

3. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, "Die National -Sozialistische Frauenschaft

(Deutscher Frauenorden) ", Meyers Konversations- Lexikon, 1932.

4. FK, op. cit., p. 7.

5. BA, op. cit., letter from Elsbeth Zander to Hitler, 12 December,

1927.

6. Ibid., Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 1932.

 333.

members of the Volksgemeinschaft. Applicants for membership of

the DFO had to be at least eighteen years of age and of German

stock; and, confirming the inclusion of the DPO within the Party

organisation, only women who were already full members of the

NSDAP could be accepted into the DFO. The intention was clearly

to make the DFO a tight -knit, reliable élite which would be more

appropriate to the Kampfzeit (period of struggle) than an unwieldy mass

organisation. As head of the DFO, Elsbeth Zander was designated

Reichsftlhrerin (National Leader)1. She apparently had difficulty

in persuading some of the existing members of the DPO to join

the Nazi Party, and finally had to offer the incentive of a reduced

membership fee together with the threat of being thrown out of the

DFO for failure to join the Party2. But the women's groups which

supported the NSDAP were still not unified; there remained other

organisations besides the DFO, of which the Frauenarbeitsgemeinschaften

(Women's Work Groups) were the largest and most important3. There

also remained a large number of women Party members who were content

to remain such without feeling the need to join a specifically

women's group4.

In the course of 1931 it became increasingly apparent that the

continuing independence and the lack of co- ordination of much of the

women's activity associated with the Party necessitated a fundamental

1. Ibid., "Richtlinien des Deutschen Frauenordens", n.d.

2. BDC, Sig. Sch., 230, notice from Elsbeth Zander, "An die Mitglieder
des Deutschen Frauen- Ordens ", 20 January, 1929.

3. FK, loc. cit.

4. BA, op. cit., "Die Organisation der nationalsozialistischen Frauen

in der Nationalsozialistischen Frauenschaft ", order signed by
Gregor Strasser, 6 July, 1931.
 334.

overhaul of the women's groups. By the summer of that year such

a task also became possible, as the Party's preoccupation with

other internal matters diminished1. The problem with the women's

groups was not merely that there were several unrelated associations,

but, more important, that the limits of the powers and functions of

the main group, the DFO, had been left somewhat vague; thus there

were variations in its activities and claims to jurisdiction,

according to the extent of the local DFO leader's assertiveness and

ambition. This contributed to a situation where leading members of

the Party began to resent the activities and - as they saw it - the

presumptuousness of the DFO. Goebbels, for one, felt that in his

Berlin Gau the DFO was not firmly enough under his authority, and

that its leadership was acting too independently of the Party machine

to which it was, he understood, supposed to be subordinate. To try

to exert greater control over the DFO, he sent instructions to his

district leaders in June 1931 that they were to make a point of

scrutinising and, if necessary, restricting the activities of the

DFO in the districts2. This, however, was intended as only a

temporary expedient; Goebbels also wrote to the Party's Organisation

Chief, Gregor Strasser, recommending that, as a matter of urgency,

the DFO be dissolved and replaced by a new organisation for women

Party members which would be more integrated into the structure of

the Party itself, and therefore easier to control3.

1. Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. I, Newton

Abbott, 1971, p. 229.

2. BA, op. cit., letter from Goebbels to his district leaders, 10

June, 1931.

3. Ibid., letter from Goebbels to Gregor Strasser, 10 June, 1931.

 335.

Goebbels's apparently modest and reasonable request was the

outward manifestation of deep discontent which had been mounting in

his Gau at the activities and general demeanour of members of the

DFO. It was felt that, far from giving "assistance" to the SA, the

DFO was a positive liability; for one thing, its members were not

trained nurses and did not even have medically- qualified supervision,

although they claimed to be competent to cope with sick and

wounded SA men. Even worse, they were said to comport themselves

in a rowdy and vulgar manner, so that trained nurses were

discouraged from joining in their work; and the DFO women insisted on

working independently, refusing to co- operate with the SA's own

emergency service, which was well established in Berlin, at least,

by 1931. Dr. Conti, reporting these views to Goebbels, emphasised

that he had plenty of witnesses to substantiate not only these

complaints but also the even more serious one of corruption. The

blame for all the trouble was attributed unequivocally to Elsbeth

Zander herself, whom Conti described as a psychopath, and against

whom he threatened to take proceedings in the Party's High Court

unless there was a radical reform of the conduct and control of the

DFO1.

Goebbels's letter apparently confirmed an impression that

was already forming in Strasser's mind2, and was no doubt decisive in

leading him to proceed at once to the preparation of an ordinance to

transform the organisation of women's activity in the Party. On 6

July, 1931, he issued an order which was distinguished by its tact:

1. BDC, op. cit., report from Dr. L. Conti to Goebbels, 3 June, 1931.

2. BA, loc. cit.

 336.
"The hitherto existing women's organisations,
which have only ever been able to embrace a section
of National Socialist women, could not, with the best will
in the world, perform Lthe necessary/ tasks...."

This situation was to be remedied by the creation of a new body,

to supersede the old ones, which was to come into existence on 1

October, 1931, and bear the name Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft

(NSF), the National Socialist Women's Group. All women Party

members in each locality would automatically constitute the NSF

organisation in the locality; thus there would no longer be the

need to wait for Party members to apply for membership of the

women's group. But the women's group was not to be a separate

organisation in the local branches of the Party; it was merely the

collective body of Nazi women in an area, which would perform the

specifically women's tasks of the Party; as such, it was directly

subordinate to the Party's local branch leader. He, however, was

empowered - although not obliged - to appoint to his executive a

woman representative who would be responsible for supervising the

women's work. There was, in addition, to be a staff of advisers

on women's affairs at the national level, which would transmit

general policy guidelines to the Gau leaderships, and, through them,

to the local branches

The existing groups were to continue their work until 1

October, and then dissolve themselves, their members automatically

becoming members of the NSF. Thus, members of the DFO, the

Frauenarbeitsgemeinschaften, and the other women in the Party who had

been members of neither of these groups, would all be brought together

1. BDC, op. cit., order by Gregor Strasser, 6 July, 1931.

 337.

under one constitution and one leadership. Elsbeth Zander had

been consulted about the reform, "as leader of the biggest and

oldest of the women's groups ", and had given her agreement; no

doubt consulting her was a wise move, since the allegiance of the

DFO's individual members was, in the first instance, to her. As a

quid pro quo for her co-operation - and in spite of the complaints

made about her - she was appointed "adviser on women's affairs" in

the Party's national leadership. This was not a breach of the 1921

resolution since her position was advisory, not executive, and was

specifically concerned with women and not with the Party's

activities in general. As a further token of recognition of the

role played by the DFO in the Party's early days, Strasser

decreed that the full title of the new organisation should be

Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft ( Deutscher Frauenorden)1.

In accordance with Strasser's schedule, the DFO held an

extraordinary annual general meeting on 6 September, 1931, at which

its dissolution was formally carried through at the national level2.

Communications between the national executive and the local groups

seem to have been variable; the Berlin Gau DFO dissolved itself on

24 September3, and issued its organisation plan for the NSF on

1 October, as planned4; but the DFO continued to exist, as a group

1. Ibid.

2. BA, op. cit., "Ausführungsbestimmungen über die Neuorganisation

der nationalsozialistischen Frauen in der Nationalsozialistischen
Frauenschaft (Deutscher Frauenorden) ", 1 November, 1931.

3. Ibid., "Rundschreiben nr. 26 ", Organisation Section of the NSDAP

Gau Gross- Berlin, 24 September, 1931.

4. Ibid., "Organisations -Plan für die Arbeit der Frauenschaft ",

1 October, 1931.
 338.

of thirty or forty women, in Trier after 1 October1, and according

to a report made in January 1932, it was into November 1931 before

it was dissolved2. The NSF organisation in Berlin, at least, at

once busied itself enrolling women Party members in the new

organisation and involving them in the provision of soup -kitchens

for unemployed Party members, especially those in the SA, since

winter was drawing in and prospects for the unemployed were growing

only bleaker3. In addition, the Berlin NSF, under the energetic

leadership of Fraulein von Gustedt, assumed responsibility for

providing sustenance for participants in the large rallies being

held by the Party in the city in autumn 19314.

Strasser was well pleased with the new arrangements; the

biggest advance, in his view, was that at all levels women's

activity for the Party was now under the direct control of the

political leadership; this meant, he felt, that women could be

brought into work of a more general nature than hitherto. This

work was to be divided into three broad categories: material aid

in terms of food and clothing for the unemployed among the SA, as

well as practical first aid; "culture and education", which largely

meant propaganda to German women, to try to attract them to National

Socialism; and training for housewives in domestic science, in

keeping with. Party ideology. This work was to be performed on a

1. Heyen, op. cit., "Berichte des Regierungsprasidenten von Trier

an den Oberprasidenten der Rheinprovinz ", 13 October, 1931, p. 73.

2. Ibid., 14 January, 1932, p. 76.

3. BDC, op. cit., draft questionnaire for intending members of the

NSF, and "Rundschreiben Nr. 1 ", "Rundschreiben Nr. 2 ", NSDAP
Gau Gross -Berlin Frauenschaft, both dated 1 October, 1931.

4. Ibid., "Rundschreiben Nr. 6a ", 9 November, 1931.

 339.

decentralised basis, with the locality as the basic organisational

unit. The Party leader in the locality was instructed to choose the

woman Party member he thought most suitable to be the NSF leader

there. Similarly, each Gauleiter chose the NSF leader for his

province, after consultation with Elsbeth Zander, as national

NSF leader. The Gau NSF leader was similarly consulted by the

Party's district leaders on the matter of choosing the district

NSF leaders. Thus, although the NSF's work was decentralised, a

chain of command was established from the locality through the

district and the Gau to the national leadership, to ensure uniformity

throughout Germany

The powers of the NSF leaders at all levels were, in fact,

very restricted, and almost exclusively advisory; the Gau NSF

leader, for example, could not give orders to the leaders in the

districts or the localities; her function was to give advice about

how best to fulfil the policies determined by the Party leadership.

Elsbeth Zander was appointed leader of the section for women's work

in the Party Organisation office, to advise Strasser on all orders

and policies he might contemplate which would affect women; she was

allowed to suggest policies, also, but was given no independent

decision -making power whatsoever2. Her tasks and that of all other

NSF officials, was to find how best to implement the decisions of

the Party as they affected women, not to question them. Elsbeth

Zander's appointment in the Party Organisation office had one

beneficial effect as far as Goebbels and his colleagues in Berlin

1. BA, op. cit., "Ausführungsbestimmungen... ", 1 November, 1931.

2. Ibid.
 340.

were concerned, even if she was still in a position of some influence:

it removed her from Berlin to Munich, so that she would no longer be

a thorn in the flesh of the Berlin Party organisation.

The women who were in the leadership of the NSF along with

Elsbeth Zander in 1931 and 1932 sometimes chafed at the tight rein

imposed on them by the Party's central organisation. Strasser's

somewhat prosaic outline of the NSF's tasks was given colour and

flamboyance in the more detailed "Principles of the NS- Prauenschaft"

produced by the women themselves. These certainly included the

Party's basic idea that women, as guardians of the race and nation

by virtue of their biological function, should cherish their maternal

instincts, and that these should condition the kind of education

and training given to girls and women. Also, there was the resolution

that what was seen as the debasement of maternal instincts and the

degradation of women's honour in the Republican period should be

fiercely combated. But there was more spirit than the Nazi leaders

might have wished for in the demands for a women's "renewal movement"

and for the training of the most able women to take their place at

the head of the nation1. There are clear signs here of the kind of

independence and even feminism which the Party had rejected from

the start, with very little of the compliant docility it expected

from its women. Their enthusiasm was not, however, to be checked at

this time, when ardour and vigour were only too necessary, but once

the Party had won power the female militants were to find that they

were expendable.

Gregor Strasser - who was also to prove expendable - seems to

1. Ibid., "Grundsatze der Nationalsozialistischen Frauenschaft", n.d.

 341.

have had some sympathy for the militants' position, and was more

than willing to give the NSF leaders increased scope for initiative.

At a national conference of Gau NSF leaders in March 1932 he asked

for opinions about the working of the 1931 regulations, and was

convinced, as a result of the response he received, that the women's

activity should be brought more into the mainstream of Party work,

with the Party's leaders at the local level taking more of an interest

in it than formerly. More opportunities should be provided, he

felt, for the participation of women in useful Party work, and

encouragement should be given wherever possible to stimulate the

women's enthusiasm. This was particularly necessary, since the

Presidential and Land elections in the early months of 1932 had

clearly shown that the Nazi Party was making relatively little

headway among women; the subordinate role assigned to women by the

Party was hardly a vote-catcher outside the ranks of the Party

faithful. By contrast, Strasser cited the power exerted in the

election campaigns by the propaganda directed specifically at women

by other parties1. The Communists were, of course, stepping up

their propaganda assault on women very considerably at this time2;

the Bavarian People's Party had specifically warned women against the

"chaos and civil war" which a Nazi victory would bring3; and there had

of
been a vigorous - and successful - campaign by the female supporters

1. IfZ, MA 644, frame 2-867017, "NSDAP: (1) Neuorganisation der nat.-

soz. Frauenschaft ", April 1932 (exact date not given).

2. See above, Chapter 1, pp. 17 -18 and Chapter 2, pp. 79 -80.

3. BA, "Reichstagswahl 1930 ", Augsburger Postzeitung, 14 September,

1930. I am most grateful to Dr. Geoffrey Pridham for pointing
out this extract to me.
 342.

Hindenburg to attract women voters to the candidate of "stability

and order "1.

Strasser took it upon himself to give concrete assurance to

women both in and outside the Party that the Nazis were not as

anti -feminist as they had seemed; to this end, he upgraded the

status of the NSF's leaders, by decreeing that the Gau NSF

leaders should in future be full members of the Gau leadership. And,

as a major innovation, the Gau NSF leaders were to be empowered to

issue orders to the NSF leaders in the districts and the localities.

Thus, the Gau NSF leader was allowed a degree of authority, some

decision-making power, and higher status. The reservation was made

that her orders and decisions must be in line with general Party

policy, and in accordance with the particular policies of her own

Gau leadership, to whose chief she was directly subordinate. On

the other hand, Strasser emphasised that, equally, the Party's

political leaders at all levels were to promote and support the work

of the NSF in every way they could2. This clearly did not find the

welcome he had hoped among the male officials of the Party, since

Strasser felt the need to send out a reminder about the last point

to all Gau offices at the end of August 1932, and to stress the

responsibility of the political leaders for ensuring that the NSF's

resources were being put to the best use3.

1. Ibid., R4511/64, DIN Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Frauenrundschau,

4 March, 1932, "Deutscher Frauenausschuss für die Hindenburg-
wahl", and 6 April, 1932, "Zur Hindenburgwahl am 10. April ".

2. IfZ, op. cit., frames 2- 867017 -18.

3. BA, S1g.Sch., 230, order by Strasser to all Gau leaderships, 31

August, 1932.
 343.

Strasser's insistence that women could play an extremely

valuable role in the Party seemed to be underlined in September

1932 when, in his general reorganisation of the associations

affiliated to the Party, he gave the NSF the status of a main

department, as Hauptabteilung VIII, in the Party Organisation

office; hitherto, the NSF had been only one of a number of groups

constituting a main department1. This move further enhanced the

status of the NSF leaders at the national and Gau level, and

especially that of Elsbeth Zander, the only woman in the Party

leadership. In the absence of firm evidence, it can only be

surmised that Strasser had decided that the antagonism felt towards

her by some of the male Party officials2 was at least partially

unjustified, and that it was chiefly his protection which kept

her at the head of the NSF; that she lost her leading position

soon after his resignation adds credence to this interpretation.

For the time being, on 1 October, 1932, Strasser issued a skeleton

plan for the new department which was to form the broad basis of the

NSF's organisational structure throughout the Third Reich30 Thus,

in one year the organisation of Nazi women had been transformed from

a loose association of groups affording material aid to Party members

into a highly -centralised and closely- controlled body within the

Party organisation itself and geared to the general political

objectives of the NSDAP.

In the last months of the Kampfzeit, as a Nazi victory seemed

1. Orlow, op. cit., p. 274.

2. See above p. 335.

3. BA, op. cit., " Hauptabteilung VIII ", 1 October, 1932.

 344.

tantalisingly close, this meant that the NSF was to engage

vigorously in a variety of activities. Above all, its members were

to continue to give first aid and sustenance to members of the SA

and SS; they were also to try to raise funds for the Party - not

for themselves, since they had no income and no treasury of their

own - and to hold lectures, discussions and social evenings for

their members and for potential recruits. NSF members were also to

participate actively in election campaigns - especially the November

Reichstag election campaign - in order to win over women to the

Party at this vital time, and to improve the Party's image among

the female population in general. It was felt especially

important that young girls be attracted to the movement, and that they

be given practical instruction in games and handwork with,

naturally, a strong infusion of "political education "1. The

involvement of NSF women in this last area brouglt sharp opposition

from within the Party itself: Baldur von Schirach, leader of the

Hitler Youth, complained to Strasser in the strongest terms about

the creation of "NS-Mädchenschaften" as youth groups associated with

the NSF; these, he said, were clearly in competition with his own

Bund deutscher Madel2. Schirach won his point; no doubt to avoid

internal dissension at a crucial time - but also because the Nazis

believed in monolithic bodies and rejected rivalry between

organisations as wasteful and divisive - it was decreed that the NSF

1. Ibid.

Ibid., "Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft", instructions issued

in Gau München-Oberbayern, 25 February, 1932.

FK, op. cit., p. 8.

2. BA, op. cit., letter from Schirach to Strasser, 8 November, 1932.

 345.

girls' groups should be disbanded, and the Hitler Youth and its

constituent associations given a monopoly of Nazi youth

organisation

But if the organisation of the NSF seemed smooth on the

surface, at the national level, and if co- operation could eliminate

some areas of dissension, there were rivalries and personal

animosities within the women's organisation which were certainly

apparent in 19322, and which would reach a climax in 1933 -34. It

seems reasonable to attribute much of the dissension to the way

in which the NSF was created, with women who had worked relatively

independently for the Party, whether in the work groups or as

individual Party members, finding themselves now in a tightly-

organised association at whose head was the leader of the former

DIO, an organisation which they had obviously deliberately decided

not to join. Discontent could also be found at the other end of

the scale, with the NSF's leadership by no means always satisfied

with the women who were supposed to be their representatives in the

Gaue and at the more local level. An example of this was to be

found in the case of Frau Polster, Gau NSF leader in North Westphalia.

She had been appointed by Gauleiter Alfred Meyer on his own

initiative, without the recommended consultation with the NSF

leadership, and clearly regarded him as her superior, feeling no

allegiance to Elsbeth Zander, and indeed - it was said - refusing to

recognise her as leader of the NSF. This situation was felt by the

1. Ibid., Slg.Sch., 257, order signed by Strasser and Schirach, 7

July, 1932.

2. William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power, London, 1966,

the
p. 75, refers to the "internal bickering that characterised
Women's Auxiliary in Thalburg "a
 346.

organisational chief of the NSF (with the title of Reichsinspekteurin),

Dr. Kate Auerhahn, to be intolerable, and she complained to

Meyer that Frau Polster was tactless, undisciplined, and, in short,

not at all suitable to be a Gau NSF leader. Kate Auerhahn

proposed to Meyer that he request Frau Polster's resignation, and

threatened that if this was refused, she would bring proceedings in

the Party's High Court against Frau Polsterl.

Meyer, however, was well aware of his powers as Gauleiter,

and replied to Kate Auerhahn that Frau Polster might be somewhat

impetuous, but had done prodigious work in building up the NSF in

his Gau. In addition, he said - and this is the other essential

part of the picture - Frau Polster had been grievously hindered

by the unco- operativeness of some of her subordinate officials who

had behaved in a way which was "anything but National Socialist ".

Alfred Meyer was prepared to investigate the charges made against

his Gau NSF leader, but he made it very clear that the decision as

to whether she should be dismissed or not lay with him, and not with

the NSF's national leadership2. In the event, he chose to retain

Frau Polster, who enjoyed a long period of office - compared with

many of the pre -1933 Gau NSF leaders - and was still to be found as

NSF leader in North Westphalia in November 19373, long after Kate

Auerhahn and Elsbeth Zander had faded into complete obscurity. Meyer's

attitude and actions well illustrate how little real power even the

1. BDC, Käte Auerhahn's file, letter from Kate Auerhahn to Alfred

Meyer, 8 August, 1932.

2. Ibid., letter from Alfred Meyer to Kate Auerhahn, 15 August, 1932.

3. Ibid., Slg.Sch., 230, list of Gau NSF leaders, 10 November, 1937.

 347.

national leadership of the NSF had, and how dependent a Gau NSF

leader was on the good will of her Gauleiter. They also underlined

the primacy of the male political leadership in the NSDAP, in

every sphere of its activity, which was to prevail throughout the

Third Reich even as the organisation of Nazi women became more

sophisticated and, at least apparently, more autonomous.

B. The Power -struggle in the Nazi Women's Organisation, 1933 -34

With the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor on 30

January, 1933, the task of the NS- Frauenschaft became, in the words

of the official account, "the construction of the work of women in

the Third Reich and the education of the entire female population

of Germany to think in the National Socialist way "1. It was not

to be as straightforward as that. The dissolution of the nonNazi

women's groups was achieved easily enough2, even if there remained

throughout the Nazi era pockets of resistance to the complete

ordering of women's affairs by the NSF, and, controlling it, the

Party3. The most immediate problem, however, was an internal one,

that of the leadership of the NSF itself. The in- fighting over

this issue involved not only the women of the NSF, but also the leaders

of the Party's organisation machine and other Party notables, and

was considered so harmful to a movement which stressed unity,

authority and harmony that it was kept out of the Party's press as

1. FK, loc. cit.

2. See above, Chapter 1, pp. 31-37.

3. Examples of this will be given later in this Chapter.

 348.

far as possible at the time; subsequently, when the story of the

development of Nazi women's activity came to be related - the Nazis

were fascinated by the history of their own movement - the events of

the first year of Nazi rule were glossed over with brief

generalisationsl.

Given the meticulousness with which the Nazis kept their

records, particularly once the Party's own archive was inaugurated

in 19342, the complete absence of documentary evidence for women's

affairs between October 1932 and January 1934, and the paucity of

evidence between January and March 1934, suggests that great pains

were taken to destroy documents regarded as damning, so that no

trace would be left of the leadership struggle. But some material

did survive, in the proceedings of the Party's High Court which

were no doubt overlooked when the process of expurgation was taking

place. This material is sufficiently substantial to permit a

reasonable attempt at a reconstruction of the events which the Nazis

were so anxious to conceal, although areas of doubt necessarily

remain. That is perhaps most puzzling of all is why the Nazis should

have been so single -mindedly determined to cover all trace of the

leadership struggle in the relatively unimportant area of women's affairs;

1. FK, op. The account given here was apparently

cit., pp. 6 -8.
considered authoritative, since it was reproduced verbatim in
Nachrichtendienst der Reichsfrauenführerin, April 1937, pp. 90-
95, and May 1937, pp. 114 -21. An almost identical account was
given in Der Neue Tag, Prague, 3 April, 1941 (Wiener Library
Personality File G15).

"5 Jahre Reichsfrauenftihrung", FK, February 1939, p. 3, categoric-

ally dates the beginning of the "women's work" of the Third Reich
from 24 February, 1934, the date of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink's
appointment as NSF leader.

2, BDC, Slf.Sch., 211, letter from Reichsschulungsleiter Gohdes to

all Party and State officials and to journalists, 30 January, 1934.
 349.

their obsession with presenting at least the outward appearance of

unity may not seem a totally satisfactory explanation, but it is

the only obvious one.

Gregor Strasser had realised that the creation of the NSF in

1931 brought together in one centralised organisation a large number

of Party members and officials who had been active solely in their

own region and did not know each other. The two national meetings of

Gau NSF leaders which he convened in March and October 1932 were

largely designed to bring these women into contact with each other.

Prominent among those present were Paula Siber and Gertrud Scholtz-

Klink, who quickly agreed that they were opposed to Elsbeth Zander's

leadership of the NSF1. Paula Siber, born in 1893 and married to a

Major in the army, with one son, had joined the NSDAP in 1931, after

working informally for it for a year, and almost at once became Gau
2
NSF leader in Dffsseldorf . Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, born in 1902, first

married to a headmaster and eventually mother of four children, had

joined the Party in about 1929 and become Gau NSF leader first in

Baden and then, in addition, in Hesse3.

Whether the combined opposition of Paula Siber and Gertrud

1. BDC, AOPG, 2684/34, letter from Paula Siber to Erich Hilgenfeldt,

14 January, 1935.

2. BDC, Paula Siber's Party membership card and "Lebenslauf ", 16

February, 1938.

3. Ibid., Party membership card, NSLB card, and Party employee's

salary card.

Cutting from Der Neue Tag, Prague, 3 April, 1941, Wiener Library
Personality File G15.

Different sources place her date of entry to the Party as being in

1929 or 1930, with Professor Charles Singer, in his Nachlass in the
Wiener Library PF G15 putting it as early as 1928. Even her Party
membership card gives 1929 and 1930 in different places.
 350.

Scholtz -Klink, along with a number of other NSF leaders whom they

won over, had much bearing on the dismissal of Elsbeth Zander from the

leadership of the NSF is difficult to tell, since she disappeared

almost without trace, and there is no record of her going. It

does seem likely that the resignation of Gregor Strasser from his

position as Reich Organisation Leader on 8 December, 1932, and

Hitler's subsequent campaign to discredit him and his work1, was a

factor in her removal from office, if only because with Strasser's

departure there was no one left to defend her. However, she seems

to have hung on to her position until the spring of 1933; William

Sheridan Allen describes a meeting addressed by Elsbeth Zander,

"the National Leader of the Nazi Women's Auxiliary ", on 2 March in

"Thalburg"2, and Paula Siber writes of "the new leader of the NSF ",

referring to the situation in June 19333.

Elsbeth Zander remains a shadowy figure, and it is clear that

this was precisely what the Party leadership intended to happen. She

appears in a relatively humble position in the Gau leadership office

in Kurmark in July 1934, and two months later is awarded the Party's

highest honour, the Gold Badge, as a veteran Party member. It is

tempting to conclude that she accepted her dismissal from office with

a good grace, and was rewarded with a steady job and a medal for going

quietly. At any rate, she was still a member of the Party and an

employee in the Kurmark Gau leadership in February 1941. Enquiries

1. Orlow, op. cit., pp. 293 -94.

2, Allen, op. cit., p. 150. Allen wrongly cites Fr5,ulein Zander's

Christian name as "Elisabeth" on more than one occasion.

3. BDC, AOPG, 2684/34, letter from Paula Siber to Gertrud Scholtz- Klink,
21 May, 1934.
 351.

about her past and current activities elicited a bare, sometimes a

sharp, response: in 1938 the Gau leadership in Thuringia was told

simply her date of birth, entry date to the NSDAP and membership number,

and her address in Kurmark, with the additional remark that she

held the Party's Gold Badge. A request for information in 1940 by a

private individual, Martha Schmidt, not herself a Party member, was

met by the reply that "information about Party members is imparted only

to Party offices and officials "1. Another of the old guard, Kate

Auerhahn, was summoned to Party headquarters in the Brown House in

Munich at the beginning of February 1933, which suggests promotion,

but she, too, was relegated to obscurity; Paula Siber was to claim that

she and Gertrud Scholtz -Klink had been opposed to giving her a

leading role2. Whether this was or was not the cause of Kate Auerhahn's

failure to succeed Elsbeth Zander, she left Munich for Heidelberg

in October 1933, and seems not to have had any further Party employment,

her occupation thenceforth being described as "housewife "3.

Once Elsbeth Zander had been removed, the choice of a successor

lay jointly in the hands of Hess, as head of the Party's Central

Political Committee, with Bormann as his chief of staff, and Robert

Ley, Hitler's chief of staff at the Party Organisation office. This

duality of control over Hauptabteilung VIII, the NSF, was the result

of the deliberate division of the authority Strasser alone had formerly

1. BDC, Elsbeth Zander's Party membership cards, Partei -Kanzlei

Korrespondenz, and Dr. Konrad Witzmann's file.

2. Ibid., AOPG, 2684/34, letter from Paula Siber to Erich Hilgenfeldt,

14 January, 1935.

3. BDC, Kate Auerhahn's Party membership card and letter from the
Gauschatzmeister, Baden, to the Membership Office at Party HQ,
12 December, 1940.
 352.

held1. The Party bosses together chose as the new NSF leader a

twenty-six- year -old girl, Lydia Gottschewski, who had recently been

national leader of the BdM2. She was not, however, given Elsbeth

Zander's former place in the Party leadership. It soon became clear

that Lydia Gottschewski was an unfortunate choice. Although she

fulfilled a useful function by violently ridiculing the middle -class

women's movement, and Gertrud Bäumer in particular3, she was

extremely outspoken, often sounding uncomfortably feminist to the

Party leadership. Her aim was to create a new "women's movement" to

replace the old, pacifist, internationalist one, and she claimed that

a society dominated by theories of male superiority would be a

divided society4. For a time, however, she carried with her the support

of about half óf the Gau NSF leaders5, but the opposition of the

remainder, again led by Paula Siber and Gertrud Scholtz-Klink6, created

a situation that was both unstable and unproductive.

This was further aggravated by the fact that, now the Party was

in Government, the conflict and confusion which was apparent in 1933

between competing agencies of Party and State over the limits of their

1. Orlow, op. cit., p. 295.

2. BDC, AOPG 2684/34, letter from Paula Siber to Gertrud Scholtz -Klink,
21 May, 1934.

BA, Slg.Sch., 251, "Richtlinien für den 'BdM "',

3. Lydia Gottschewski, "Zur Einführung", Die Deutsche Frauenfront, August

1933, p. 1.

4. Lydia Gottschewski, MRnnerbund und Frauenfrage, Munich, 1934,

pp. 8 -9, 13, 20, 39 -43, 70 -77.

5. BDC, op. cit., statement by Bormann, 30 May, 1934.

6. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

 353.

jurisdiction had its effect on the women's organisation. Wilhelm

Frick, as Reich Minister of the Interior, maintained that at least

some of the responsibility for running the affairs of German women

should lie with his Ministry, and it was with this in mind that he

appointed Paula Siber to be his "adviser on women's affairs" on 12

June, 1933. Her immediate task was, as

"representative of German women and of the women's

organisations 597 bring together in the service of the
national community the various women's groups in a united
National Federation of German Women's Organisations ",

under the authority of the Minister of the Interior'. This

activity brought her into immediate conflict with Lydia Gottschewski,

who was engaged in exactly the same task, the bringing of all German

women's organisations into a new combine, the Frauenfront (Women's

Front), this time under the leadership and control of the Party2. As

far as Hess and Ley were concerned, this was the only right thing to

do, since in their view anything affecting group activity was a Party

matter3.

Already, however, opposition to Lydia Gottschewski was mounting

from a number of quarters. Gertrud Scholtz -Klink clashed with her

at a Gau NSF leaders' meeting in June 1933, and the next month led

a deputation of Gau NSF leaders to Berlin to report that the condition

of the NSF could only be described as disconsolate and uncertain4. Frau

1. Ibid.

2. Lydia Gottschewski, Die Deutsche Frauenfront, loc. cit.

BDC, op. cit., letter from Walter Buch to Dr. G. A. Krummacher,

20 September, 1933.

3. Ibid., statement by Bormann, 30 May, 1934.

4. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Gertrud Scholtz -Klink, 21 May, 1934.
 354.

von Hadeln, leader of the conservative Bund K8niAin Luise, which

had supported Hitler in the 1932 elections and joined the Frauenfront

immediately on its creation, complained that Lydia Gottschewski had

refused to admit the BKL to the work of the Frauenfront, and had

actually encouraged NSF members to launch verbal attacks on the

BKL. Frau von Hadeln - an army officer's wife who was not herself

a Party member - found a sympathetic listener in Walter Buch, chairman

of the Party High Court, who passed on her complaints to Bormann, and

who now became an enemy of Lydia Gottschewski in a powerful positionl.

Thus, although Hess and Ley wanted to uphold her position

against Paula Siber's, they found that Lydia Gottschewski was fast

becoming a liability, and finally her "position became untenable on

organisational grounds ", as Bormann later put it. She was replaced

as leader of the NSF in mid- September 1933 by Dr. Gottfried Adolf

Krummacher2, a local government official in the Rhineland and member

of the Prussian Landtag, who had been a Party member since 19303.

Since it had become clear that the women were incapable of ordering

their own affairs rationally and amicably, and since considerable

damage was being done to the image of the Party and the effectiveness

of its women's organisation, the Party leaders had decided to see if

1. Ibid., letter from Walter Buch to Dr. Krummacher, 20 September, 1933.

2. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Gertrud Scholtz -Klink, 21

May, 1934.

Stockhorst, op. cit., p. 254.

3. BDC, G. A. Krummacher's Party membership card, and letter from the

Gauleitung, Mil-Aachen, to the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP, 1
September, 1934.
 355.

a man could restore authority and order. One result of these

events was that the Labour Service Leader, Hierl, insisted for a

long time that a man should be put in charge of the Women's Labour

Service, although Gertrud Scholtz -Klink had, at Ley's request,

drawn up an organisation plan for it, and her name had been put

forward for this post. Dr. Krummacher, in fact, held this position

until January 1934, when, in spite of his protests, Frau Scholtz-

Klink was finally created leader of the Women's Labour Servicel,

the first of a number of offices which she was soon to amass.

This overriding of Dr. Krummacher's wishes in January 1934 was

an accurate reflection of how low his stock had sunk in four months.

Far from resolving the divisions in the women's organisation, his

appointment had, if anything, made them more acute. Paula Siber,

particularly, resented it, since she had seen herself as the obvious

candidate to succeed Lydia Gottschewski - and also because she believed

that women's affairs should be under the leadership of a woman. She

also claimed that she had the support of the Gau NSF leaders, although

Bormann was prepared to concede only that she and Lydia Gottschewski

each had the support of half of them2. Paula Siber was also proud of

having created the new mass organisation of German women - in contrast

with the NSF, which was the élite leadership group - the Deutsches

Frauenwerk (DFw), which was recognised by the leaderships of both

1. Ibid., AOPG 2684/34, loc. cit.

Nieuwenhuysen, op. cit., p. 234.

2. BDC, op. cit., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

Ibid., statement by Bormann, 30 May, 1934.

 356.

Party and State in September 1933 as the superseder of both the

Frauenfront and her own Federation1. But at this same point in time

she had to accept a compromise reached by Hess and Frick in September

1933, by which she was appointed deputy leader of the DPW, whose head

was to be Dr. Krummacher, the NSF leader. He, for his part, returned

Paula Siber's animosity, seeing her appointment as an anomaly and a

potential source of discord, since she was responsible to Frick, and

not to the Brown House2.

In Dr. Krummacher the Party leaders had made another bad

choice. For one thing, his holding of other offices besides those in

the women's organisation meant that he could not give the latter the

attention it required at this crucial time. As Landrat in Gummersbach,

in the Rhineland, and holder of other provincial appointments, he

spent relatively little time in Munich, on NSF business, Moreover,

since the DFW's central office was in Berlin he seldom managed to

visit it; Paula Siber asserted that on the few occasions he did, he

created confusion by countermanding orders he had previously given.

In a long report on the state of the DFW, made in mid -January 1934,

she attributed to Dr. Krummacher's neglect, indecisiveness and

abrasive manner the fact that the DFW had no funds, no plans for future

activity, and that a number of the organisations enrolled in it were

now applying to withdraw. There was, in Paula Siber's view, plenty that

the DFW could do - indeed must do - in the Nazi State, but this would

be possible only if immediate action were taken to prevent its collapse,

1. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

2. Ibid., letter from Dr. Krummacher to Frick, 25 April, 1934.

 357.

and to give it firm direction1. Naturally enough, Dr. Krummacher

saw the situation differently, and blamed Paula Siber, who, being

permanently based in Berlin, was in charge of the day-to -day running

of the DFW, for the confused and demoralised condition of the

organisation

To try to remedy the situation, Dr. Krummacher tried to

transfer the DFW's office to Munich; this would have the two -fold

benefit of easing his own travelling problem and removing the DFW's

affairs from Paula Siber's control completely, since her position in

the Ministry of the Interior kept her in Berlin. The agreement which

had been reached by Frick and Hess in September 1933 did not provide

for such a move, but Ley, the other Party boss with direct authority

over the women's organisation, had no compunction in giving Krummacher's

proposal the Party's approval. Krummacher has perhaps been unfortunate

in having been branded the villain of the piece3; he seems to have had

considerable problems, not least in feeling genuinely in doubt about

the "limits of responsibility" for the DFW between the Party and the

Ministry of the Interior, since the Frick -Hess agreement had left that

question open - no doubt to avoid conflict. Frick continued to assert

that he was the "protector" of the DFW, while Hess and Ley were of the

opinion that the DPW was subordinate to the Party's authority.

Krummacher, anxious to avoid being the cause of strife between the two,

1. Ibid., Paula Siber, "Bericht fiber das DFW", 15 January, 1934.

2. Ibid., letter from Dr. Krummacher to Frick, 25 April, 1934.

3. Kirkpatrick, op. cit., pp. 60 -61, is critical of Dr. Krummacher

while calling Paula Siber "tolerant and conciliatory ". He seems
unaware of the deeper, underlying conflict between Party and State
over the leadership issue.
 358.

asked that they decide the matter between themselves1.

He did not, however, manage to avoid becoming a scapegoat:

because of his "organisational blunders ", as Bormann put it, he was

relieved of his positions in the women's organisation at the end of

January 1934. Hess was now determined that order should be brought

out of the confusion into which the women's organisation had been

allowed to drift, and appointed Erich Hilgenfeldt, who was leader of

the Party's welfare organisation, the NSV, leader of the NSF.

Hilgenfeldt was regarded as a strong man who would be able to resolve

the conflicts and problems of the women's organisation; Hess found

it additionally suitable that there should be close co- operation

between the welfare organisation and the NSF, since women were

expected to play a large part in welfare activities in the Nazi

State. But the problem of duality of control over women's affairs

remained, and so Hess - who had always seen this as anomalous and

damaging - decided that the time had come for the Party to assume

sole control of the DFW, and to place its leadership in the hands of

the leader of the NSF, namely Hilgenfeldt2. To do this, however,

would be to provoke a direct confrontation with Paula Siber and, more

important, with Frick. The evidence available overwhelmingly suggests

that the Party leadership came to the conclusion that the only way to

achieve their aim without causing an ugly, and possibly a public,

conflict between themselves and the Minister of the Interior was to

act quickly to discredit Paula Siber in such a way that Frick would be

unable to uphold her position. With her removed, the Party could take

1. BDC, loc. cit.

2. Ibid., statement by Bormann, 30 May, 1934.

 359.

over the functions she had exercised, and there would be little

chance for Frick to reverse the position at a later date.

With a mandate from the Party to proceed quickly and decisively,

then, Hilgenfeldt assumed the leadership of the DFW as well as the

NSF, and at once ordered an inspection of its accounts1. While this

was being carried out, Hilgenfeldt agreed to meet the Gau NSF leaders,

who were perplexed by the changes in the leadership and in any case

hoped that a woman would again be appointed. When Gertrud Scholtz -

Klink's name was suggested - presumably at the Party leaders'

instigation - on 21 February, 1934, Paula Siber was completely taken

aback and did all she could to persuade Hilgenfeldt that Frau

Scholtz -Klink would be an unwise choice. She had no doubt expected

that she would now be the obvious candidate, since she did enjoy

substantial support among the Gau NSF leaders, compared with Gertrud

Scholtz -Klink who was less well -known nationally. Nevertheless, on

24 February Gertrud Scholtz -Klink's appointment to leadership of the

NSF and the DFW - in addition to the position she already held as

leader of the Women's Labour Service - was announced. Paula Siber

now, with a fairly good grace, agreed to accept this, and promised to

co-operate fully with the new leader, resentful though she was that,

as founder of the DFW, she was not to be permitted to lead it2.

The Party leadership, however, wanted her removed from any

position of prominence, since she had, so it seemed, caused nothing

but trouble by her apparent inability to collaborate peaceably

1. Ibid.

2. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Gertrud Scholtz -Klink, 21 May,

1934.
 360.

with any of the NSF leaders appointed by the Party, from Elsbeth

Zander onwards1. In addition, she may have had support among the

Gau NSF leaders, but she had also antagonised and, apparently,

manoeuvred against, some of them2. Her speeches had even began

to show a self -confidence bordering on independence, as well as

traces of feminism3: in short, she had become a liability in

herself, quite apart from being an obstacle to complete control by the

Party over the organisation of women.

The inspection of the DFW's accounts which Hilgenfeldt had

ordered revealed a discrepancy which suggested that the person in

charge of them, Paula Siber, was guilty of either mismanagement or

embezzlement. At the same time as this was discovered, early in March

1934, the charge was laid against Paula Siber, by Charlotte Hauser -

for a short time an official of the DFW - that she had pocketed money

collected at DFW meetings to finance her own publications4. This was

either extremely convenient for the Party bosses or - which seems

more likely - the result of collusion between Hilgenfeldt and

Charlotte Hauser, who had a grudge against Paula Siber, and who was

admitted by Hilgenfeldt to have "deficiencies of character "5.

1. Ibid., statement by Bormann, 30 May, 1934.

2. Ibid., letters to Hilgenfeldt from Gau NSF leader M. Blass and E.

Moll (Sekretariat Florian), both dated 10 March, 1934.

3. BDC, Paula Siber's file, letter from Paula Siber to Hinkel, in the
Prussian Ministry of Education, 16 February, 1934.

Gertrud Baumer certainly thought that Paula Siber was trying to start
a new women's movement which would challenge the male chauvinism of
National Socialism, BA, Kl.Erw., 296 -(1), letter from Gertrud
Bäumer to Dorothee von Velsen, 23 October, 1933.

4. BDC, AOPG, 2684/34, statement by Bormann, 30 May, 1934.

Ibid., statement by Paula Siber, 2 June, 1934.

Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

5. Ibid., letter from Hilgenfeldt to Major Siber, 14 March, 1934.

 361.

On the basis of these two points, the faulty finances of the DFW -

discovered by an investigator who, Paula Siber claimed, regarded

her with animosity1 - and Charlotte Hauser's accusation, Hilgenfeldt

began his manoeuvre to oust Paula Siber from active participation

in the women's organisation. On 9 March, he sent a telegram

banning her from public speaking2, and a few days later threatened

that if she did not resign from her position in the Ministry of the

Interior he would publicise the charges against her and generally

blacken her name in such a way that it would be impossible for her

to continue in her position3. Frick, in fact, suspended her from

office on 17 March, while he carried out his own investigation of

her activities; this satisfied him that, while she had perhaps shown

a lack of competence in some respects, she had not behaved dishonestly

and was an enthusiastic worker. Accordingly, he reinstated her in

office on 12 May, 19344.

As far as Frick was concerned, the question of where authority

over the women's organisation lay was still an open ones. But

Hilgenfeldt was not to be stopped now, and refused to work with Paula

Siber. She came to the conclusion that, now that she was excluded

from the work of the DFW, her position in Frick's Ministry had lost its

function, and so, reluctantly, she felt obliged to tender her

1. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Gertrud Scholtz- Klink, 21 May,

1934.

2. Ibid., telegram from Hilgenfeldt to Paula Siber, 9 March, 1934.

3. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

4. Ibid., letters from Frick to Hilgenfeldt and Paula Siber, 12 May,

1934.

5o Ibid., letter from Frick to Hilgenfeldt, 12 May, 1934.

 362.
resignation, with effect from 1 July, 19341. Thus, the central

objective of the Party leadership was achieved, and the control of

all the organisational activity of women in the Third Reich was in

the hands of the Party. Hilgenfeldt retained his title as "Head of

the NS-Frauenschaft "2, but had little more to do with the affairs of

the women's organisation; these were ordered by Gertrud Scholtz -Klink,

under the supervision of Hess and Ley.

Paula Siber was never again to hold office in the women's

organisation. She damned herself conclusively in the eyes of the

Party leadership by bringing a libel suit against Hilgenfeldt

in the Party's High Court, a case which dragged on from June until

December 1934. Indeed she won in the end a retraction by Hilgenfeldt

of his charges against her of "dishonourable behaviour "3, but this

did not achieve her aim of full public rehabilitation, after the

damage done to her reputation by Hilgenfeldt's public assertions that

she had been guilty of corruption. Throughout 1935 she and her

husband campaigned for her rehabilitation which, they pointed out

in the massive correspondence with which they bombarded Party leaders,

could be achieved only by reinstatement in office4. But they were

fighting a losing battle, and fighting it in total ignorance of the

deeper issues involved. Paula Siber naively wrote to Bormann, asking

1. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

2. BDC, Erich Hilgenfeldt's Party membership card, dated 1 March, 1939.

3. Ibid., AOPG, 2684/34, statement by Hilgenfeldt, 5 December, 1934.

4. The large volume of detailed material relating to the case in the

Party's High Court and to the correspondence between the Sibers and
Party officials is to be found in BDC, loc. cit.. Limitations of
space prevent a full discussion of this material here.
 363.

for his support1, obviously unaware of his attitude. This was

unequivocally revealed in a confidential letter to Walter Buch,

chairman of the Party's High Court, in which he wrote:

"The exclusion of Frau Sieber 5i '

from the handling of
women's affairs lay completely within the policy of the
Party leadership, since the activity of Frau Sieber as
adviser for women's affairs in the Ministry of the Interior
led to constant unrest ".

He added that since her departure there had at last been peace and

harmony within the women's organisation2. Hilgenfeldt, too, wrote

to Buch, to explain that he had become involved in the matter only

to prevent a split in the women's organisation, and harboured no

personal animosity against Paula Siber3. She was at least right in

deducing that Hilgenfeldt's aim was her complete exclusion from the

women's organisation4; but she remained in ignorance of the role

he was performing, as the agent of the Party leadership. She was

further mistaken in imagining that her former associate, Gertrud

Scholtz - Klink, would come to her aids; on the contrary, the new

women's leader threatened to resign if Paula Siber was again given

a position in the women's organisation

Paula Siber had more reasonably expected that Frick would act

as her champion, and in February 1935 she asked him to demonstrate his

1. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

2. Ibid., letter from Bormann to Buch, 1 October, 1934.

3. Ibid., letter from Hilgenfeldt to Buch, 3 November, 1934.

4. Ibid., Paula Siber's accusation against Hilgenfeldt, 2 June, 1934.

5. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Hilgenfeldt, 14 January, 1935.

6. Ibid., letter from Gertrud Scholtz -Klink to Hess, 20 December, 1934.

 364.
confidence in her by giving her another positionl. His reply

was most encouraging , but nothing concrete emerged, and it fell

to Pfundtner, months later, to answer her repeated reminders with

the information that "so far it has unfortunately not been possible

to reinstate you in the women's work "3. By this time, July 1935,

it was too late for Frick to try to regain influence over the

women's organisation; its development was proceeding smoothly under

Party control, and he himself had had many other interests and

involvements during the period of the "Siber affair ". He did,

however, warmly recommend Paula Siber for work in the Reich Chamber

of Culture , to which she had applied, faute de mieux5, and she

worked there in the Reich Committee of Journalists until 1937, and

after that became a free -lance journalist6. For someone who had

caused so much trouble for the Party leadership, she was perhaps

fortunate to emerge unscathed, even if she finally had to abandon her

ambition of playing a decisive role in the Nazi organisation of

women.

1. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Frick, 2 February, 1935.

2. Ibid., letter from Frick to Paula Siber, 22 February, 1935.

3. Ibid., letter from Pfundtner to Paula Siber, 23 July, 1935.

4. BDC, Paula Siber's file, letter from Metzner, at the Ministry of

the Interior, to Hinkel, at the Reich Chamber of Culture, 28
January, 1936.

5. Ibid., letter from Paula Siber to Hinkel, 5 September, 1935.

6. Ibid., Paula Siber, "Lebenslauf ", 16 February, 1938.

 365.
C. The Women's Leaders, Women's Organisation and "Women's Work"
in the Third Reich

While Paula Siber had been fighting for reinstatement, Gertrud

Scholtz-Klink had been proceeding with the task of unifying the

women's organisational activity of the nation. She was helped

initially by a barrage of propaganda to the effect that the

apparent problems of the first year of Nazi rule had been of small

consequence, but had been exaggerated in the press - an implausible

story, given the strict censorship that was in force. Orders now

went out that any statement about the NSF, the DFW, the women's

Labour Service, or relations between these organisations, was to

be vetted by a senior NSF official before publication or expositionl.

From the spring of 1934, the Nazi women's organisation was,

particularly on the surface, but for the most part also in its local

branches as well as its national leadership, a model of harmony and

a faithful agent of the Party Organisation's political and social

policies.

For this, the Party owed a debt of gratitude to Gertrud Scholtz-

Klink; at last, in her, the Party bosses had made a wise choice.

She was to provide the two things they sought in their women's

leader, co- operation - at times to the point of toadying - and a firm

hand to ensure obedience and uniformity within her organisations. Her

reward was to become a show -piece woman, the one representative of,

and yardstick for, the German woman; she was not built up as a

charismatic figure - this treatment was accorded to the Flihrer alone -

1. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, "Gau- Verordnungsblatt 2/34 ", Altona, 1 March,

1934.
 366.

but rather she became the personification of human womanly

achievement and virtue in the Nazi State. Her value to the Party

was quickly recognised, and in November 1934 she was accorded the

title of ReichsfrauenfUhrerin, National Women's Leader1. Her

unchallenged dominance in the women's organisation was underlined by

her being invested as leader of every group involving women. She

retained her position as leader of the Women's Labour Service when

she was appointed leader of both the NSF and the DFW in February

19342. Then, in July 1934, when Ley created a Women's Office in

the Labour Front he chose Frau Scholtz -Klink to be its leader3. In

the following month, she was appointed "adviser for the protection

of women at work" on a committee of the NSB04. Already she had

become leader of the National Women's Association of the German

Red Cross, "by virtue of her appointment" as NSF leader, and in the

years that followed she continued to amass new titles and new offices5.

Frau Scholtz -Klink °s holding of positions in organisations

whose members were predominantly male gave women representation in

these, andthus gave at least the impression that women were being

fully involved in most aspects of German life, contrary to what

were characterised as misconceptions, and even lies, perpetrated

abroad about women being totally excluded from all activities outside

1. "5 Jahre Reichsfrauenf{ihrung ", PK, February 1939, p. 3.

2. BA, loc. cit.

3. Ibid., "Einrichtung eines Frauenamtes in der DAF, 12.7.34 ",

NS-Korrespondenz, no. 162, 13 July, 1934.

4. BDC, Partei-Kanzlei Korrespondenz, letter from an NSBO official

to Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, 28 August, 1934.

5. E.g., she became a member of the honorary leadership of the RdK

in May 1936, and leader of a section in the Praesidium of the
German Red Cross on 1 January, 1938. FK, op. cit., pp. 3 -5.
 367.

the home in Nazi Germany1. But, in truth, her status within

the NSDAP remained a source of doubt and disagreement. Bormann

eventually issued a statement in October 1937, to clarify the

matter, to the effect that Frau Scholtz -Klink held the rank of

Hauptemtsleiter, leader of a main department, in the national

leadership of the Party2. Nominally, this put a woman in the top

rank of the Party élite; but this was not in fact a contradiction of

Party policy, since she carried no authority outside the women's

organisations, and thus had little real power within the Party

itself, and none at all in the Government. As late as January 1938,

she had to admit that she had never had the chance to discuss the

women's organisation and its activities with Hitler3, but she did

have contact with leading members of the Party, quite apart from

the normal course of business where she was frequently in

communication with Hess and Ley. There was, for example, a fairly

regular correspondence between Gertrud Scholtz -Klink and Alfred

Rosenberg between 1935 and 1939, at least; sometimes this concerned

invitations to speaking engagements, sometimes it was merely of the

order of birthday greetings4. And the National Women's Leader's

position was sufficient to ensure that she was regarded as a valuable

1. "Einsatz der Frau in der Nation ", speech by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink

at the 1937 Party Congress, published by the DFW.

Trude Bürkner, quoted in Die Frau, April 1937, P. 4020

2. BDC, op. cit., "Rundschreiben nr. 128/37 ", issued by Hess's office,
6 October, 1937.

3. BA, R431I/427, letter from Gertrud Scholtz -Klink to Bormann, 24

January, 1938.

4. TfZ, MA 253, Rosenberg-Akten, e.g. frames 677 -78, 683, 687 -92, 695-
96 are invitations from Frau Scholtz -Klink to Rosenberg, or vice -
versa, to speak at functions, with replies; frame 671 is Rosenberg's
birthday greeting to Frau Scholtz -Klink on 9 February, 1939, and
frame 670 is her acknowledgment; she sent him a Christmas card in
the same year, which he acknowledged, frame 661.
 368.

source of patronage. For example, Rosenberg's secretary, Thilo

von Trotha, wrote to her asking that his mother, who was an NSF

official in Pomerania, be given the chance to speak with Frau

Scholtz -Klink when she visited that areal.

If Frau Scholtz -Klink was the showpiece of German women,

there were nevertheless others who also achieved positions of

influence and prestige, although always either within the women's

organisations or as a female "adviser" on a committee that was

otherwise entirely male. For example, Auguste Reber -Gruber, a

married woman teacher who was born in 1892 and who joined the

NSDAP in May 1932, became "adviser for girls' education" in the Nazi

Teachers' League in 1934, and two years later was, in addition,

appointed to the position of senior administrator in the Reich

Ministry of Education2. Again, there was Dora Hein, who was the

same age as Dr. Reber -Gruber and who, like her, was a leading

member of the NSF; she joined the Party as early as May 1925,

remained unmarried, and, as a professional civil servant, became

"expert on women's affairs" and leader of a section in the

Reichsbund der Deutschen Beamten on 1 October, 19343. Another Party

veteran, Anne -Marie Koeppen, who was born in 1899, remained single

and joined the NSDAP in June 1928, was a journalist who became editor

of the Reichsnáhrstand's magazine for women and leader of a section in

1. Ibid., frame 723, letter from Thilo von Trotha to Gertrud Scholtz -
Klink, 28 March, 1935.

2. BDC, Party Census of 1939 and a letter from Hess, 9 October, 1936.

3. Ibid., Party Census of 1939 and a statement by Dora Hein, 28

July, 1939.
 369.
Walter Darre's office from 1934 to 19371. Both she and Dora Hein

were awarded the Party's Gold Badge2, along with a select group of

women on Frau Scholtz- Klink's staff on the sixth anniversary of the

Machtübernahme in January 19393. Gertrud Scholtz -Klink had already

received the Gold Badge at the commemoration service for the "martyrs"

of 1923, on 9 November, 19364.

It was also possible for those who had joined the Party after

30 January, 1933, to achieve high office in the women's organisation.

The outstanding example here is Dr. Ilse Eben- Servaes, who was born

in 1894, was married, with one child, and who joined the NSDAP

in April 1933. She went on to become a member of the Party leadership

in February 1935, and leader of the section for women lawyers in the

NSRB, the Nazi Lawyers' Association. Dr. Eben- Servaes had a

successful legal practice before 1933, and her professional experience

was a valuable asset to the women's organisation; in 1934, she

became legal adviser on Frau Scholtz -Klink's staff, and on the first

day of 1936 took up the position of leader of the section for law

and arbitration there5. Like Frau Scholtz-Klink6, she was appointed

a member of the Academy of German Law in October 19367. Although

1. Ibid., Anne -Marie Koeppen's file, "Lebenslauf ", 12 May, 1938.

2. Ibid., Party Census of 1939.

3. "Nachrichten aus der Reichsfrauenfiihrung. Januar -MArz 1939 ", FK

May 1939, inside of title page.

4. HA, Reel 13, folder 254, "Partei-Archiv ", November 1936.

5. BDC, Ilse Eben -Servaes's file, answers to a questionnaire for the

NSDAP leadership, 2 October, 1939.

6. HA, loc. cit.

7. BA, R61/168, letter from Ilse Eben-Servaes to Loyal, at the Academy

of German Law, 12 December, 1938.
 370.

Else Paul was officially Frau Scholtz-Klink's deputy in the

National Women's Leadership1, she remained very much in the

background, her functions being largely administrative, and Dr.

Eben-Servaes in fact held a position among women in the Party second

only to Gertrud Scholtz -Klink's, at least until 19422; as such, she

was similarly used as a showpiece of what women could achieve in the

Third Reich.

The organisation which these women and others built up, both

within the Party, with the NSF, and affiliated to it, with the DFW,

had begun to take shape while the leadership struggle was going on.

The NSF had, like other sections of the NSDAP, been geared to

effecting the takeover of power; once this was accomplished, its role

changed and it became the élite group which was - under the Party

leadership - to order the affairs of German women. In this, it had

benefited from the general process of Gleichschaltung, by which all

women's groups of a political nature had disappeared with the parties

with which they were associated, and organisations promoting aims

which the Nazis opposed - particularly the pacifist and feminist ones -

had been banned3. Of the remainder, the women's professional and

vocational organisations were absorbed, along with their masculine

counterparts, into the relevant Nazi organisation4, and those considered

inoffensive were allowed - at least for a time - to continue in

existence if they became corporate members of the monolithic association

1. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, "Stab des Hauptamtes NS -F und DPW", n.d.

2. BDC, Ilse Eben-Servaes's file, letter of 22 January, 1942.

3. See above, Chapter 1, pp. 31 -37.

4. See above, Chapter 5, pp. 286 -90.

 371.

which was run by the NSF and from September 1933 called Das

Deutsche Frauenwerk1.

Paula Siber had, in practice, been in charge of the day-to -day

running of the DFW during its first four months, and her view of

it was as the promoter of social, cultural and economic activity

among women2. Most of its function during her period of office was

simply the co- ordination of agencies which already existed for

encouraging an interest in German culture and for advising women

and girls on matters of child -care and household management3. It is

often assumed that the Nazis initiated schemes of this nature, with

the purpose of encouraging German nationalism and forcing women to

accept that their sphere of activity and interest was the home

and family; certainly, these motives can justly be attributed to

them, but, as usual, they could claim no originality in devising

organisations to promote them. Before 1933 there were active groups

of women in, for example, the National Union of German Housewives

and the National Association of German Housewives' Organisations,

in the Women's Group of the National Association of German Musicians

and Music Teachers, in the body called German Women's Culture, and in

organisations giving instruction in infant and child -care and general

1. BDC, AOPG, 2684/34, letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May,

1934.

2. BDC, Paula Siber's file, letter from Paula Siber to Hinkel at

the Prussian Ministry of Education, 16 February, 1934.

3. Organisations which figured in reports in BF in the section

"Aus unseren Vereinen und Verbanden" during the period October
1931 to May 1933 appear in BA, op. cit., "Liste dem DFW
angeschlossenen Reichsspitzenverbände, April 1935 "; the same
applies to some of the groups mentioned in BA, Nachlass Katharina
von Kardorff, no. 28, "Der XI. Prauencongress in Berlin, 17- 22.6.1929:
Ehrenbeirat der Verbanden.
 372.

training for motherhood1. The Nazis' aim was to nationalise

existing activity, and to give it uniformity on the basis of Party

ideology - once the chaos of 1933 -34 had been resolved - within the

structure of the DEW, whose policy was determined by the NSF2.

The NSF continued to be essentially the collective body of

women Party members that it had been from its inception, although

during the 1930s modifications of its composition were made. Early

in 1935, Ley altered Strasser's original order that "All women

Party members are automatically members of the NS- Frauenschaft"

to read "Only those women Party members who are prepared to be

active participants in the NS- Frauenschaft automatically become

members of it "3. There was clearly no room in the NSF for dead

wood. This order was the beginning of attempts to control the size

of the NSF, so that it would indeed retain its élitist character,

after the rush to join the Party and its affiliates in and after

1933. The NSF thus followed the example set by the NSDAP itself:

a firm restriction on entry to the Party had come into force on

1 May, 19334. Doubtless impressed by this precedent, Gertrud

Scholtz -Klink asked Hess in January 1936 that there be a moratorium on

admission to the NSF as quickly as possible. Ley's approval was

quickly obtained, and the order went out that "The NS-Frauenschaft

has now reached a membership which is fully sufficient

1. BF, loc. cit.

FK, February 1939, loc. cit.

2. Reichsfrauenftihrung (ed.), NS- Frauenschaft, Berlin, 1937, p. 16.

3. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, "Information (6) Nr. 0.18/35 ", issued by Ley,
27 February, 1935, p. 2.

4. Broszat, op. cit., p. 253.

 373.

for the performance of its tasks... ", and that, accordingly,

admission to it was closed to all except members of the BdM, from

1 February, 19361. In fact, Hess decided that only girls in the

BdM leadership should be admitted to the NSF, but to prevent

disappointment among those girls in other ranks of the BdM who

would have hoped to be admitted to the NSF in 1936, a compromise

was reached by Gertrud Scholtz -Klink and Trude BUrkner, the

national BdM leader, for 1936 only, so that almost all of the girls

who would have been admitted under the previous regulations in fact

became members of the NSF2.

Three years later, Frau Scholtz-Klink issued new guidelines

for membership, "since the NS-Frauenschaft should be consolidated

more strongly than hitherto as an lite organisation ". Thus, all

women who held office in the DFW or any organisation affiliated to

the NSDAP, such as the NSV, the Labour Front, the Nazi Teachers'

League, would be considered for membership of the NSF after eighteen

months' "faultless" tenure of that office. Members of the BdM

leadership, office-holders and "active comrades" in the ANSt - the

group of Nazi girl students - and leaders in the Women's Labour Service

would also be accepted3. By this time, with Germany at war, it was

felt to be particularly important that anyone in a position of

leadership should be under close Party control; membership of the

NSF facilitated this, especially since the NSF had been declared a

1. BA, op. cit., letter from Friedrichs, in Hess's office, to Ley,

17 January, 1936.

2. Ibid., notice from Trude Bürkner to the Reich Youth Leadership and
the Gau BdM leaders, 17 October, 1936.

3. Ibid., "Anordnung nr. 2/39 ", 25 October, issued by Gertrud Scholtz-

Klink, 1939.
 374.

member- organisation of the NSDAP itself in March 19351. Thus,

the needs of war - with NSF members responsible for supervising women's

war -work and for maintaining morale among the female population2 -

led once again to an expansion of the NSF's membership, beyond the

two million reliable women who belonged to it in 19383.

The main function of the NSF was "the cultural, spiritual and

political education of German women "4. Thus, it was vital that its

members be thoroughly trained in Nazi ideas about racial "science ",

militant nationalism, and enthusiasm for large families. To this

end, a special seminar was begun in January 1935, to provide

lectures and group discussion for NSF members. The topics were

either "weltanschaulich" (ideological), or else about German

history and culture, or about practical housekeeping. These were

studied in an intensive two -week course, which also included sight-

seeing tours of Berlin and visits to the city's museums as light

reliefs. The literature about the seminar explained that it was

deliberate policy to lay strong emphasis on "political education"

in the course, since most of the participants were, by occupation,

primarily involved in work of a practical nature, and yet were now

put in the position of providing spiritual leadership for the mass of

1. FK, loc. cit.

2. BA, NSD 3/5, "Aufgaben der NS-Frauenschaft", 16 July, 1940,

p. 659.

3. Figure calculated from information in BA, Slg.Sch., 230,

Reichsfrauenftihrun Jahresbericht 1938, pp. 11 and 14.

4. "NS- Frauenschaft und Deutsches Frauenwerk", Führerlexikon

1934/35, p. 93.

5. IfZ, MA 609, frames 56489 -92, "Amt für wissenschaftlicher

Arbeit ", n.d.
 375.

German women1. Certainly, of the 3,260 women who had attended the

seminar by autumn 1939, most were involved in practical

occupations, the best -represented being that of clerical worker2.

The NSF, then, relied overwhelmingly on part -time, voluntary officials;

all of its 20,000 or more workers in the localities participated

on this basis, while in the districts only 9% of the NSF's

officials were full-time, salaried employees. All of the 32

Gau NSF leaders and most of their assistants in the Gau NSF offices -

together making a proportion of 81% there - were professional

Party workers3. As was often the case in the Third Reich, then, the

Nazis depended on the enthusiasm and devotion of large numbers of

their female adherents for the operation of their system and avoided

spending more than a limited amount of money on salaries.

The NSF's task was, then, to give ideological leadership to

the female population of Germany, and especially to ensure that the

activities of the largest body of organised women, in the DFW,

corresponded with the Nazi view of the nature and role of women. Thus,

it was the task of the DFW to orientate its activities in such a

way that women were constantly reminded that child - bearing was

the greatest joy they could experience, and also it was a solemn duty

to be performed for the benefit of the nation. In addition, a large

part of the DFW's work was to lie in helping women to keep physically

healthy for this function, and in teaching them how to bring up

1. BA, NS15/15, frame 56526, Else Petri, "Ziel und Aufgabe des
Seminars ", Seminar für die NS-Frauenschaft an der Hochschule
für Politik, Winter 1939/40.

2. IfZ, frames 56477 -84, "Bericht über die bisherige

op. cit.,
Tatigkeit des Seminars...1935 -39 ".

3. BA, S1.Sch., 230, op. cit., pp. 5-6, and p. I.

 376.

healthy children. Looking after children meant two more things:

German women would have to learn proficiency in cookery, sewing,

washing and ironing clothes, and general household management; and

as the first educators of children, passing on their own views and

standards to the young, they would have to be thoroughly inculcated

with Nazi ideology. Finally, as recreation, women had a "cultural"

task, namely the promotion of interest in German literature, art and

music, and the discouraging of foreign cultural influences.

Paula Siber had begun the work of co- ordinating courses in

domestic science and child-care already run by the various

confessional and housewives' organisations1, but the leadership

struggle had hindered this development. After her appointment in

February 1934, Gertrud Scholtz -Klink moved quickly to rationalise

this activity which was vital to the Party's purpose, and within

two months she had drawn up regulations for a unified service, the

Reichsm{ltterdienst (National Mothers' Service), which was to be

operated throughout Germany by the DFW. Its tasks fell into two

main categories, instruction for mothers and the provision of welfare

for mothers. The courses of instruction were supervised in each

Gau by a woman with a suitable professional qualification, while in

the welfare activities there was close co-operation with the NSV.

The groups which had formerly engaged in work of this kind were plainly

told that if they wished to continue their activity they would have

to work under the leadership of the DFW, or else be dissolved2. This

1. BDC, AOPG, 2684/34, statements made by Paula Siber, 28 and 30 April,

1934.

2. "Das Deutsche Frauenwerk fiber die Eingliederung der Verbande ",

Die Frau, April 1934, pp. 506 -07.
 377.

ultimatum was considered necessary because the purpose of the

Reichsmtitterdienst - which was inaugurated on Mother's Day in May 19341

- was

"not only to instruct women in domestic science within the

context of national economic policy: the aim of the
ReichsmItterdienst is political education 5hich if the
development of a particular attituder2.

The courses were well publicised in the Party's women's

magazines3, and meticulous records of attendance were kept in each

Gau4. To try to accommodate employed women as well as housewives,

the courses were offered in mornings, afternoons and evenings for

three different groups in the cities, while in rural areas travelling

instructors were employed5. The courses seem to have met a real

demand; if 100,000 participants was a modest beginning in their first

year6, the numbers soon rose sharply, so that in 1936 there were

452,000 participants in more than 22,000 courses7. This was even

1. FK, loc. cit.

2. Quoted from NS-Mádchenbildung in "Zur politischen Schulung im

Reiohsmtitterdienst ", Die Frau, November 1936, p. 108.

30 E.g., FK, May 1939, loc. cit.

"Die kameradschaftliche Volksmutter", NS-Frauenwarte, May 1936,

pp. 774 -75 and p. 778.

4. BA, op. cit., pp. 8 and 37.

5. BA, R2/12771, letter from the Deutscher Gemeindetag to Rust, 20

October, 1937.

IfZ, MA 388, frame 726440, "Die Gaubräuteschule des Deutschen

Frauenwerkes Mütterdienst, Brüggen/Niederrhein ", n.d. ( ?early 1939).

6. "Frau Scholtz -Klink über: Die Mitarbeit der deutschen Frau im neuen
Staat - Der Sinn des Muttertages ", VB, 8 May, 1935.

7. "Arbeit des Reichsmftterdienstes, 1934 -37 ", Deutsches Frauenschaffen

1938, pp. 36 -37.
 378.

before an element of compulsion was introduced for certain

categories of women - for the fiancées of SS men from November

19361, and for the wives and fiancees of SA men in 19382. The

wives of SS men were also strongly encouraged to take part in a

course3. Altogether, in 1944 it was estimated that in ten years

about five million women and girls had attended a Reichsmatterdienst

course, at an average annual rate of half a million women in thirty

thousand courses4. Large numbers of staff were required to operate

a scheme of this size, and this created financial problems, although

participants had to pay fees. The situation was such that Frau

Scholtz -Klink felt the need to express regret at being unable to pay

the various administrators and instructors at a better rate, and as

compensation ensured that they had longer holidays than other vocational

workers5. Meagre resources did not, however, lead to a slowing down

of the activity, since the courses were felt to serve the interests of

the Party's permanent preoccupation, the raising of the birth rate6.

As part of the continuing expansion, residential courses were

1. BA, loc. cit.

2. HA, Reel 13, folder 253: order by Brigadeführer Giesler of SA

Gruppe Hochland, i October, 1937; order by Gruppenführer Günther
of SA Gruppe Thüringen, n.d. ( ?October 1937).

Report in FZ, 9 February, 1938.

3. "'Die Hausfrau der Zukunft', Schulung aller SS-Bräute durch den

Reichsmütterdienst ", FZ, 2 December, 1936.

4. "Bevölkerungspolitik ", Die Deutsche Sozialpolitik, July 1944, P. 63.

5. HA, op. cit., Reichsfrauenführung "Rundschreiben FW Nr. 48/37 ",

n.d. ( ?June 1937).

6. Ibid., folder 254, Reichsfrauenführung "Rundschreiben FW Nr. 94/

37 ", 14 October, 1937.
 379.

provided in 1937, and there were special "Brides' Schools" which

were run by the DFW for the wives and fiancées of SS and SA men

and members of the armed forces1. In these, an inexperienced young

woman was put in a situation where she had the model of a home to

run for six weeks - a house which included children, to stress that

the child was a natural, indeed an indispensable, part of a complete

household. The cost of this venture was met by fees, which could

be partly offset by a marriage loan, thus again encouraging procreation,

since the loan could be substantially cancelled by the birth of

children2. But the interest initially shown in this project by the

SS, and particularly by Rimmier3, was short -lived: although the SS

asked in April 1939 for reports to be made about the progress of its

members' brides in the course4, the outbreak of war within five

months and the hasty marriages it occasioned led Himmler to drop

attendance at a course of instruction from his list of requirements

for SS brides5o

While the Reichsmütterdienst was intended as an exercise in

propaganda as well as a practical venture, the real work of "political

education" was the responsibility of the section in the DFW called

"Kultur-Erziehung- Schulung". By 1939 this included, in addition to

1. "Die Aufgaben der Bráuteschulen", FZ, 30 December, 1937.

2. IfZ, op. cit., frames 726440 -41.

3. BA, loc. cit.

BA, Slg.Sch., 230, "Zusammenarbeit des Deutschen Frauenwerkes mit

der SS zwecks Mütterschulung der SS-Braute ", order issued by Himmler,
22 April, 1937.

4. IfZ, op. cit., frames 726442-43, letter from SS- Pflegestelle 20 to

the Gau NSF leadership, Düsseldorf, 24 April, 1939.

5. Ibid., MA 387, frame 6254, order issued by Himmler, 1 September,

1939.
 380.

the provision of courses of instruction on matters of race,

heredity and German history, divisions for "academic work ", girls'

education, literature, art and music, handcrafts and physical

training1. This entire section was closely associated with the

activities of the Labour Front's Kraft durch Freude (Strength

through Joy) enterprise2. By 1939, it was reported that almost

every Gau had established an agency for instruction in ideological

matters; while Halle -Merseburg, Mecklenburg and Schleswig-Holstein

had yet to do this, there were two or more such agencies in

Dusseldorf, Cologne-Aachen, South-Hanover- Brunswick and Württemberg-

Hohenzollern3. The content of the instruction consisted mainly of

explanations of Nazi policy, in terms both of long-term objectives

and day-to -day measures, and justification of them in order to

encourage co- operation from as much of the female population as

possible4.

The task of ensuring that the DFW was kept under the

leadership and control of the NSF was facilitated by the policy of

Personalunion, the holding of positions in both by reliable women.

At the top, Frau Scholtz-Klink had been appointed leader of both

groups at the same time, to provide continuity at the national

level; correspondingly, it had been policy from the founding of

the DFW to continue this kind of arrangement in the Gaue, so that

1. "Organisationsplan der Reichsfrauenführung", Deutsches Frauen-

schaffen, 1939, p. 8.

2. BA, op. cit., Reichsfrauenftihrung Jahresbericht 1938, p. II.

3. Ibid., p. 9.

4. "Die Arbeit der NS- Frauenschaft und des Deutschen Frauenwerks im

Jahre 1935 ", NS- Frauenwarte, March 1936, p. 613.
 381.

the woman responsible for the work of the DFW in the Party's

largest administrative unit was normally the Gau NSF leaded.

In 1934, this degree of personal union was declared compulsory2.

But for the time being this was where the policy stopped; it was

also decreed that no NSF official should preside over all the

different groups of DFW activity in her area, because of the

specialised nature of the work done in some of them3.

The DFW's structure and organisation were, however, felt by

Hess and Ley to be unsatisfactory for the function the association

was intended to perform, and after much discussion4, a new

constitution was produced in April 1936 which described its aim

as "the organisational unification of women prepared to collaborate

in the Ftihrer's work of construction, under the leadership of the

NSF", and extended the policy of personal union. Now, the Dr'W

was formally divided into the same geographical units as the NSF,

and therefore as the NSDAP, and, as an innovation, the NSF leader

in any area was designated the automatic choice for DFW leadership

in the same area. This streamlining of the DFW, hitherto divided

according to the interests of the constituent groups, was a natural

result of its elevation to the status of an "affiliated organisation"

of the Party, to which the principles of the Party itself applied,

whereas formerly its connection with the Party had been indirect,

1. BDC, op. cit., letter from Paula Siber to Bormann, 22 May, 1934.

2. Ftihrerlexikon, loe. cit.

3. Die Frau, April 1934, loe. cit.

4. BA, op. cit., letter from Sommer, in Hess's office, to Ley, 28

August, 1935.

Ibid., letter from Ley to Hess, 8 October, 1935.

 382.

through its association with the NSF1. Thus, the Nazification of

the women's organisation followed upon the nationalisation of its

work in the early Gleichschalturng period; this further step

involved a breach of the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican, as

Stuckart pointed out to Hess2, but for the Party it was an obvious

step to take, to increase its control over the direction of women's

affairs.

It was not only the DFN which had to be kept in line with

NSF, and ultimately Party, policy; for there were other offices

and organisations which dealt with matters of interest to and

involving women. It was to facilitate co- operation, and even

uniformity, among these that Frau Scholtz -Klink was given positions

within the Labour Front and the NSBO, for example. Because she was

thus expected and enabled to provide "unified leadership...for all

areas of womanly work in the community"3, she built up a

centralised bureau of officials around herself as National Women's

Leader, which was formally accorded the title of Reichsfrauenführung

(National Women's Leadership) in June 1936. This, "the only office

responsible for all matters of concern to the German woman ", developed

close links with the other groups in which women were involved, but

which were outside Frau Scholtz -Klink's direct authority, by means of

agreements for co- operation, to avoid demarcation disputes and to try

to prevent duplication of functions. Such arrangements were made, for

1. Ibid., "Satzung des Deutschen Frauenwerks ", Der FLlhrerorden,

11 April, 1936.

2. BA, R22/24, letter from Stuckart to Hess, 14 December, 1936.

3. "Nationalsozialistische Frauenarbeit", FK, April 1937, p. 9.

 383.

example, with the NS-Cultural Community in January 1935, with the

ANSI at the same time, with the Nazi Teachers' League in June 1936,

and in the following month with the section for "Mother and Child" in

the NSV-t1.

There were other groups, too, which were expected to co-

operate with Frau Scholtz -Klink's office; prominent among these

were the Red Cross and the NS- Schwesternschaft, the Party's own

nursing corps, which was under the jurisdiction of the NSV2. But Ley

made it clear in January 1934 that no agency of the Party nor any

State organisation was to try to establish its own women's groups

which would, in effect, be rivals to the NSF or the DFW. Ley

emphasised that these two were specifically intended to be monopoly

organisations, for women Party members and for other female citizens

respectively, to eliminate class or other divisions among German

women - chiefly, obviously, to avoid the kind of diversity and even

conflict which the Party considered so harmful to national harmony and

uniformity. Ley pointed out that women might indeed be members of

an occupational or professional group, but such a group would also

have male members, and would thus not aspire to become a specifically

women's interest group, taking a particular section of women out of

the mainstream of female activity, which was to find its expression

in the DFW . It was this attitude which underlay the Party's

insistence on making women's sections of professional organisations,

1. FK, February 1939, op. cit., pp. 3-4.

2. Schafer, op. cit., p. 63.

3. BA, op. cit., " Rundschreiben nr. 1/34", 5 January, 1934, issued
by Ley.
 384.

for example, corporate members of the DFW, and, in the later 1930s,

at least, involving their members as much as possible in the work of

the DFW.

Ley's edict did not prevent confusion occurring from time

to time thereafter. For example, Frau Scholtz -Klink found it

necessary to resolve the "considerable lack of clarity about the

relationship of the housewife to the D.W and the Labour Front ", in

summer 1936. She had agreed with Hess and Ley that all employed

housewives belonged, by virtue of their being employees, to the

DAF, while all housewives who were not employed outside the home

belonged - insofar as they wished to be organised, she was careful

to add - to the NSF or the DFW, whichever was appropriate. She felt

obliged to clarify this point because a group within the DAF, the

National Association of Domestic Workers, had been trying to enlist

full -time housewives as members. Now, in July 1936, Frau Scholtz-

Klink banned such activity, and announced that where the interests

of housewives and domestic employees coincided, provision would be

made for joint meetings to take place at the district level, under the

supervision of the NSF1, to ensure that her orders were observed.

The National Women's Leadership was not itself an organisation

but rather the central administrative agency in which the various

branches of women's activity were represented by "experts ".

Predictably, Ilse E'ben- Servaes became the authority on legal matters,

while Auguste Reber- Gruber was the adviser on education. There were

also experts on foreign affairs, nursing, the Labour Service, "Mother

1. Ibid., NSF information leaflet, "Zugehörigkeit der Hausfrauen zum

DFW bzw. zur DAF", signed by Gertrud Scholtz -Klink, July, 1936.
 385.

and Child ", and the radio, for propaganda'. These officials, along

with other general assistants, were appointed to enable Frau Scholtz-

Klink to discharge her many duties in a vast number of organisations,

in a wide variety of fields. The office evolved during the 1930s,

but although modifications were made after 1936 it was by then that it

had developed its essential form. Its nine sections were divided

into two groups, with those responsible for culture and education,

national and domestic economy, foreign activity, social assistance,

and training for motherhood coming into being in the years 1934 -36,

to co- ordinate the DFW's activity in the same areas. The other four

sections dealt with purely organisational matters, including finance,

personnel, information collation, and press and propaganda, which

included radio, films and exhibitions

The propaganda network of the National Women's Leadership was

modelled on the propaganda machine of the NSDAP. Within its

jurisdiction came the publications of both the NSF and the DFW,

including the NS- Frauenwarte, the NSF's official magazine, which had

the highest circulation of any Party periodical3. In addition, there

were pamphlets, newsletters, and films and radio broadcasts directed

specifically at women . The radio programmes consisted chiefly of

cookery hints, including the skilful use of cheaper foodstuffs, and

"cultural" items concerned with German literature and music; in keeping

with the Party's view of women as the mothers of the nation, there was

1. Ibid., Reichsfrauenführung Jahresbericht 1938, "Stab des Hauptamtes

NS-Frauenschaft und Deutsches Frauenwerk", n.d., ?1935.

2. FK, April 1937, loc. cit.

3. BA, R61/172, letter to the Academy of German Law, 29 January, 1936.

4. Deutsches Frauenschaffen, loc. cit.

 386.

also a regular "Listen with Mother" feature for small children1.

Propaganda included the staging of exhibitions, at both the

national and local level; these were generally on the theme of

"Woman and Nation ", the title of a national exhibition held in May -

June 1935, or "The Contribution of Women in the Community ", the title

of the women's exhibition held during the 1937 Party Congress2. The

content of these tended to be tableaux depicting women's role, the

products of the DFW's sewing bees and illustrated records of the

work of NSF and DFW women at home and abroad. In 1937 there were

altogether 3,000 such exhibitions, visited by a million and a half

people, while in 1938 there were almost 3,600 exhibitions - this

time, however, visited by the smaller number of 1.1 million

people3. In addition, there were fetes, sales of work and meetings,

which attracted a reasonable attendance: in 1937, almost 1.4

million women attended the 16,330 events of this nature, while in

1938 both these figures were nearly doubled4.

If German women took an interest in these events and were

prepared to participate in them to some extent, it seems clear that

this was an indication more of their liking for social gatherings than

of their enthusiastic support for National Socialism. The

nationalisation of social life gave everyone - who was racially and

politically acceptable to the Nazis - the chance to participate,

1. HA, op. cit., "Der Frauenfunk der Woche, 21.3 - 27.3.1937 ", pp. 1-6.

2. FK, February 1939, op. cit., pp. 3 and 5.

3. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, op. cit., p. 29.

4. Ibid., p. 28.
 387.

and excluded no -one. It was, of course, deliberate Party policy

to try to involve everyone, and thus to control them; there were,

however, special problems to be faced in organising women for this

purpose. The full -time housewife - nominally, at least, the Nazi

ideal as far as women were concerned - was potentially the least easy

member of the community to organise, and so special propaganda had

to be directed at her, to encourage her to believe that it was her

duty to be "politically aware" of her role in the life of the

community, and to be involved in activities outside the home, to

make contact with her female fellow -citizens'. For many women who

felt isolated as housebound wives, and who had possibly developed an

inferiority complex in the relatively feminist atmosphere of the 1920s,

the vitality and sense of direction provided by the Nazi women's

organisation was a new lease of life2.

The organisational activity could, it transpired, be overdone.

In December 1935, the Party's agent in Bad Kreuznach, near Mainz,

reported that the recruiting drives, cultural evenings, assemblies

and Christmas festivities conducted by the Party and its affiliates

had been so intensive and persistent that the local population was

beginning to sigh, "We're being organised to death:" The net results

of this energetic activity were, accordingly, disappointing: the only

new recruits won for the women's organisations had been from among the

1. Lore Bauer, "Die 'politische' Frau ", VB, 6 September, 1935.

"Erziehung zur politischen Verantwortung: Die Frau, die

Erzieherin der Jugend, muss teilnehmen an der Entwicklung des
staatlichen Lebens ", VB, 27 September, 1935.

2. This, at any rate, was what the Nazis claimed to have achieved,
and there was clearly some truth in it. This was confirmed by a
former minor official of the NSF in Munich, in conversation; she
seemed sufficiently uninhibited and free from a guilt complex to
be credible.
 388.
wives of Party members and civil servants1. Clearly, resistance to

involvement could be the result of saturation by propaganda in favour

of it. But resistance could also be the result of deliberate

activity by the few agencies outside the NSDAP and its groups which

continued to exist; with most sources of actual and potential

opposition quickly eliminated in 1933, the largest ones remaining

thereafter were the Churches. Both the Evangelical and the Roman

Catholic Churches offered resistance to the monopolising of

organisational activity by the Nazis, since it was bound to encroach

on their own territory. The degree of obstructiveness was at times

such that the Party's local representative had to report, as in the

case of Neuwied, near Koblenz, in 1935, that

"it is not possible to form an NSF group in parish D. The

lack of success is attributed to the women's association,
which is under the influence and leadership of the pastor's
wife "2.

As late as February 1938, it was reported from a district in the

Trier area that it had still not been possible to form an NSF

group because of the opposition of the priest3.

Much has been made of the blind and often hysterical enthusiasm

1. Heyen, op. cit., "Aus dem Lagebericht des Landrates von Bad
Kreuznach fiber den Monat Dezember 1935 ", no. 164, pp. 291 -92.

2. Ibid., "Aus dem Lagebericht des Landrats von Neuwied fiber den Monat
12.1935 ", no. 89, p. 179.

3. Ibid., "Politische Beurteilungen der einzelnen Ortsgruppen des

Kreises Trier-Land-West, vom 1 Februar 1938 ", no. 200, p. 341.
 389.
for Hitler and the Nazis manifested by some women1. But it ought

also to be stressed that in the day-to -day opposition and passive

resistance offered by the Churches in the Third Reich, women were

often in the forefront2. If it can be argued from this that women

were opposing one kind of superstition and domination because of

their attachment to another, this does not detract from the fact

that there was considerable resistance to Nazi organising drives

among women at the local, often parochial, level.

This was doubtless a reason for the slow rate at which DFW

membership grew, in spite of the effort expended on publicising its

activities and the initial compulsion exerted on existing groups to

take out corporate membership. According to the Party's statistical

records, there were in 1935 eighty -seven groups in the DFW, with a

total membership of 2.7 million3. But since the National Women's

1. L. P. Lochner (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries 1942/43, London, 1949,

entry for 12 September, 1943, P. 358.

Douglas L. Kelley, Twenty -Two Cells in Nuremberg, London, 1947,

p. 60.

Heinrich Fraenkel, German People versus Hitler, London, 1940,

pp. 222 and 227.

W. L. Shirer, Berlin Diary 1934-41, London, 1941, entries for

4 September, 1934, pp. 22 -23, and 4 -5 September (3 am), 1940,
p. 389.

2. Heyen, op. cit., "Aus dem Lagebericht des Landrates von Bad
Kreuznach aber den Monat Januar 1936 ", no. 90, p. 180.

Ibid., from answers to a questionnaire in Koblenz, August 1938,

no. 93, p. 185.

BA, Slg.Sch., 243/II, vol. 2, "Demonstration kath. Frauen in

Beulich", 2 May, 1939. I am most grateful to Dr. J. S. Conway
of the University of British Columbia for generously sending me
a copy of this document.

3. NSDAP Partei -Statistik, 1935, vol. III, p. 58.

 390.
Leadership reported that the figure for DFW membership in December

1937 was only about 670,0001, it seems likely that the 1935 figure

included NSF members, probably some two million of them. It is

reasonable to suppose, however, that there was a decline in DFW

membership between 1935 and 1937, since a number of the groups which

had become corporate members in 1933 and 1934 were dissolved in 1935

and 19362. If their members wished to maintain their connection with

the DFW - and many probably did not, once their own organisation

was dissolved - they would have had to apply for individual

membership. But at last in 1938 there was a significant rise in

DFW numbers, with the total for the end of that year rising above

1.1 million in Germany itself, and, in addition, there were over

400,000 members in Austria nine months after the Anschluss3. The

total membership claimed at the end of 1940 for the Greater German

Reich was around six million for the NSF and DFW together4, an

increase of about two million over the comparable total for

December 19385.

Frau Scholtz -Klink and her staff were well aware that the

conflict between the generations had been a major problem for the

feminist organisations in the later 1920s, and were determined that no

1. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, op. cit., p. 11.

2. This concerned chiefly the former conservative or nationalist

organisations. See above, Chapter 1, p. 34.

3. BA, loc. cit.

4. IfZ, MA 253, frame 653, "Der Einsatz der NSF/DPW im Kriegsjahr

1940"

5. BA, loc. cit.

 391.

such difficulties should upset the harmony of the Nazi women's

organisation. Clearly, twenty -one -year -old girls coming straight

from the BdM into the NSF, and young women joining the DFW, would

have to be provided with interesting activities; otherwise, they

might feel that they were being submerged in a housewives' club

run by middle-aged matrons, and subside into apathy or

disaffection. The tactic adopted to try to avoid this, and to

encourage new recruits for the DFW and groom potential NSF members

and leaders, was the creation of "youth groups" within both the

NSF and the DFW, in 1936, for the eighteen to thirty age -group.

The official regulations for the youth groups stated that their

purpose was primarily to bring young women together and to provide

the opportunity for them to do the things people of their age

liked to do; these were deemed to include singing and dancing, with

a high content of physical exercise, including hill -walking. But

there were special "education" - political indoctrination - courses

as well, which were vital to the Nazi scheme given that young women had,

in the Party's view, constantly to be reminded that their destiny

and their duty lay in marrying and starting a family - or adding to

a family they might already have. To emphasise this, the girls were

also expected to take an active part in the DFW's sectional work,

particularly in the realm of domestic management and child -caret.

In order to keep young women in this important age -group as

much under Party surveillance as possible, a vast array of activities

was designated as desirable, including training with the Red Cross

1. BA, op. cit., "Anordnung Nr. 2/37", issued by Gertrud Scholtz-

Klink, 12 February, 1937.
 392.

and voluntary assistance in first -aid and welfare work, training

in air -raid protection, and, for the more energetic, reaching a

standard of proficiency in physical pursuits to win the women's

National Sport Badge1. But in spite of the barrage of propaganda

directed at attracting young women to the youth groups, recruitment

here - as to the DFW generally - was disappointing. Perhaps the

Nazis had, after all, misjudged the disposition and desires of

young women; or perhaps they had simply overestimated the extent to

which they could, in a one -party State, with a monopoly of

propaganda, mould the disposition and desires of groups of Germans,

according to the role they were assigned in Nazi plans. At any rate,

by the beginning of 1939 the youth groups had a modest membership

of 168,533, while, it was observed, there were nearly 400,000 women

between eighteen and thirty in the NSF alone, with a considerable

number in the DFW in addition. It was, however, felt to be

encouraging that the year 1938 had seen an increase of 48%

in the membership2, and there was to be a further rise to 292,000

by September 1939, and the achievement of a membership of over

400,000 in August 1942. But these last figures apply to the Greater

German Reicha, and are therefore not directly comparable with the

1938 figures, which apply to Germany within its 1937 borders.

There remained one group of Germans, other than pre- school -age

children, for whom organised activity had to be provided, if the

1. Dorothea Thimme, "Die Jugendgruppen des Deutschen Frauenwerkes

bekennen sich zur Leistung ", FK, September 1938, p. 5.

2. BA, op. cit., Reichsfrauenfiihrung Jahresbericht 1938, pp. 19 -20.

3. BA, NSD 3/5, "Jugendgruppen der NS-Frauenschaft/Deutsches Frauen-

werk", 13 October, 1942, p. 660.
 393.

totalitarian State was to try to control all its citizens: this was

the six -to- ten -year -old group, which was too young to join the

junior branches of the Hitler Youth, but nevertheless at a highly

impressionable age. It was therefore made the task of the NSF to create

"children's groups ", which by early 1938 catered for 350,000

children, in almost 9,500 groups; attendance increased during 1938,

so that at the end of the year the figures were, respectively, over

400,000 and 11,0001. The stated aim of these groups was that the

entire German youth should grow up in a community from early

childhood, to inculcate in them the ideals of comradeship and mutual

consideration, and to "strengthen their love for Ftlhrer and nation ".

But indoctrination was not the only purpose of the groups, in the

later 1930s; at a time when women were increasingly being encouraged

to enter employment outside the home even before the outbreak of war,

and more urgently after it, it was imperative that mothers of young

children should have facilities provided for the care of their

children while they worked. The children's groups, then, were to

remedy the insufficiency of crèches, which was one of the many

complaints made by working women in the early days of the war about

conditions2. To try to expedite this, Ley ordered that accommodation

at the disposal of the Labour Front be given over to the children's

groups3.

While the female population generally was being exhorted to

serve the Fatherland in war -time, increased demands were made on the

1. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, op. cit., p. 25.

2. If2, MA 4411, frames 2- 750490 -91, MadR, 18 December, 1939.

3. BA, op. cit., " Anordnung 1/40", issued by Ley, 16 January, 1940.
 394.

women's organisation, too. Members of the NSF and the DFW were

called upon to undertake voluntary work - which had the supreme

virtue for the Government of costing little or nothing in terms of

remuneration - in agriculture, or first -aid, or factory work, if they

were unable to engage full -time in productive work. Certainly, there

were areas where piecemeal, amateur activity was extremely suitable,

for example in the staffing of créches, the undertaking of clothes

repairs and the provision of auxiliary nursing assistance for

civilians; these tasks, and others, were performed by members of the

DFW from the start of the war. But the NSF's own statistics revealed

how very sporadic and sparse the voluntary activity was: in 1940,

more than three - and -a -half million women in the NSF and the DFW

worked for over 200 million hours without pay, that is at the

average rate of about an hour a week, which was only a gesture when

the country was at war. The NSF, of course, had additional duties,

particularly in terms of propaganda activity, to maintain the "inner

front" of ideological conformity among the women of the nation at a time

when solidarity was even more necessary than evert. But it is clear

that the Government tried to make good the shortages of labour, which

its own failure to coerce women into war-work perpetuated, by

relying on voluntary, part -time women workers who turned out to be

as reluctant to expend more than a very minimal amount of time and

energy outside their own routine, in spite of the exhortations and the

pleas, as to take up full -time, paid employment in vital war industry.

Again and again, concrete information belies the proud boasts

made by Frau Scholtz-Klink, her staff and her propaganda network

1. IfZ, MA 253, frames 649 -54, "Der Einsatz der NSF/DFW im Kriegsjahr
1940".
 395.

that the Nazi -directed activity of women in the Third Reich was

energetic, all- embracing and performed with enthusiasm by vast

numbers of German women. There was certainly an impression of

industry and large -scale participation, chiefly because the Party's

press generally, and the women's press in particular, gave

comprehensive coverage of events of even the most minor significance,

exaggerating their scope and importance. In this context, the

example of press circulation is itself instructive: the National

Women's Leadership published its own newsletter, the official

magazines of both the NSF and the DFW, and two other magazines

designed to interest women, Mutter and Volk (Mother and Nation) and

Deutsche Hauswirtschaft (German Housekeeping). In 1938, when there

were over two million NSF members, the NS- Frauenwarte, the official

magazine of the NSF, had a circulation of 1.2 million; if this was

perhaps respectable, it nevertheless meant that only just over half

of the Party's élite organisation of women subscribed to their own

magazine, which hardly indicated real enthusiasm. Also in 1938, when

the DFW's membership was, at its highest point, 1.1 million, a mere

23,000 women took the D.N's magazine, Frauenkultur im Deutschen

Frauenwerk; and only 76,000 subscribed to the Nachrichtendienst,

the Leadership's newsletter. The other two magazines together

attracted about 300,000 readers between them, on a roughly half -and-

half basis1. Thus the success of Frau Scholtz -Klink's office in

promoting its publications - and two of its three official ones,

particularly - was limited, not to say poor; the net result was that

1. BA, Slg. Soh., 230, Reichsfrauenftthrung Jahresbericht 1938, p, 28.

 396.

the barrage of propaganda did not reach even all the women who had

chosen to join an organisation, let alone the vast majority who had

not.

If it is true that the housewife in any community is the

hardest member of it to organise, this is not a particularly

alarming situation in a liberal democratic society or even an old -

fashioned conservative autocratic regime. But in a modern dictatorship

which aspires to be totalitarian it must be a source of concern, since

it means that a whole category of citizens cannot be controlled and,

of even greater importance, this is the category which has control

over the youth of the nation in its earliest years. Their obsession

with uniformity and control, and their deep concern for the

upbringing of future generations of Germans, made the Nazis try

continuously, by flattery and by appeals, to attract women to

organisations under the supervision of the Party. They had some

success with employed women, who at least had to pay lip -service to

the Nazi system to feel secure in a job, but these tended to join

specialist groups for both sexes rather than a group composed

exclusively of women. For example, the records kept about women

civil servants show that members of a group employed in the Chancellery

itself chose, in addition to their occupational group, the RDB, the

National Air -Raid Protection Society, the NSV and the Colonial Society

regularly, but the DBW seldoml. It can hardly be surprising that, in

a society where such stress was laid on the comradeship of men and

women and the necessity of raising the birth rate, the women gravitated

1. BA, R4311/1091c, information from personal records kept in the Reich

Chancellery about its employees, compiled between March and May 1939.
 397.

- as most women normally do - into mixed rather than segregated groups,

thus confounding the other, at times contradictory, Nazi preoccupation

that the functions of the two sexes should, on the whole, be kept

separate.

The NSF was indeed a well -organised, elite, leadership group,

as had been intended, "to educate in the spirit of community life

through the union of women from all sections of the population in

the service of the National Socialist idea "1. But its "followers"

remained dispersed, and to a large extent apathetic. It was loudly

boasted that the DFW was successfully cutting across the barriers of

class and occupation, with "the housewife and the employed woman,

the domestic servant and the professional woman, the unskilled woman

worker and the artist" all finding common ground in the activities

of the Frauenwerk2. But the herding of as many women as could be

persuaded into a segregated organisation was an essentially

artificial manoeuvre, for, as Ley himself observed,

"The DFW cannot, in my opinion, be termed a

'National Socialist community'.... The name 'community'
can only be applied where there is a gathering of people
from all sections of the nation. The organisation of
members of one sex can therefore not be termed a community "3.

Even the streamlining of the DFW, and its closer association

with the Party, from 1936 could not disguise the fact that it was

still basically the product of the nationalisation of groups which

had existed before 1933. Certainly, much of the activity, especially

in terms of child -care, homecraft and first -aid, was set on a more

1. Reichsfrauenführung, op. cit., p. 14.

2. Ibid., p. 20.

3. BA, Slg.Sch., 230, letter from Ley to Hess, 8 October, 1935.

 398.

systematic footing, and those organisations which were dissolved

after the initial purge were either not relevant to the sectional

work of the DF'Ñ or else rationalised into larger groupings. Thus,

the membership of the DIW continued largely to consist of those

women who had previously chosen to join a group for specifically

women's interests, since coercion was not used. Coercion would

hardly have been practicable, given that it would have been difficult

to impose sanctions on full -time housewives, who had no outside job to

be dismissed from, and who were in the delicate position of bringing

up the nation's children. This latter function meant that there was

a real need to make these women well -disposed towards the regime, so

that threats were out of the question. To this extent, perhaps, the

Nazis succeeded; if there was little positive enthusiasm for Party

activities there was no organised opposition either. The resistance

that manifested itself was resistance to involvement; as long as the

Nazis were prepared to leave the mass of women unorganised, German

women gave at least passive acquiescence to the regime. This was,

of course, of incalculable value, but it nevertheless was a poor

return for the incessant propaganda directed at mobilising positive support

for the regime on the part of women. To the extent that the Nazis

tried hard to organise women and to prevent the relative isolation

of the full -time housewife, they must be deemed to have failed.

 399.

CONCLUSION

The study of even the few selected aspects of women's

position in German society in the 1930s which have figured in this

work permits the making of observations, and the drawing of tentative

conclusions, in three broad areas. Firstly, and most obviously, the

general position of women at the end of the decade, compared with

that in 1930, must be evaluated. Then there are remarks of a more

general kind that can be made in the German context, particularly

with regard to the Nazi regime, its policies, and its aspirations

to totalitarian control of Germany. And finally more should be said

about the position of women in other countries, since there is only

limited profit in looking at the situation in one country in a

vacuum. But, obviously, to attempt to consider other countries in

a comprehensive way would unreasonably extend a work that is already

lengthy, and so it is possible here to look only at a few aspects of

women's position in some European countries, and to look at them

briefly.

A. The German Scene

In the general German context, six aspects stand out most

clearly, and provide an interesting insight into the politics and

problems of the later Weimar period and into the operation of the Nazi

regime. In the first place, it appears that the inability of the

Reich governments from 1930 -33 to take effective action in the

economic crisis was in part a product of the democratic system,

eroded as it became in these years. In this system, precarious

coalition governments of often basically incompatible elements

followed one another in rapid succession; decisions were arrived at

 400.

only slowly - and sometimes never - at a time when speed was

essential; and the power of the Reich government was in any case

limited as a result of the substantial autonomy still jealously

guarded by the Lander. The stagnation, at times to the extent of

paralysis, to which these features contributed caused frustration

among the supporters of the Republic and provided ready ammunition

for the growing body of opposition to it, on both right and left.

In a sense, this created a vicious circle, since governments could

not act without further antagonising either the right or the left.

And while the last governments of the Republic would hardly have

favoured the kind of action that would have met strong opposition on

the right, they also feared to generate support for the left by

deliberately outraging it. Most of the time, then, inaction seemed

the least harmful course.

But if governments did not give clear evidence of energetic

attempts to solve Germany's problems in the late 1920s, particularly

in the depression, they nevertheless were busy discussing possible

plans, appointing committees and consulting experts. The direction

in which their investigations took them was, it is clear, often very

similar to that subsequently followed - generally with vigour,

ruthlessness and effectiveness - by Hitler's Government. The attempt

to reduce student numbers in the early 1930s and to pursue a positive

population policy are two examples of this. If the policies

eventually implemented by the Nazis were often a distortion of those

provisionally envisaged by the Brüning Government, particularly, there

was nevertheless a strong degree of continuity in the policies

considered and followed in the years 1930 to 1935/36. This is hardly

remarkable, since any government of Germany at this time, even one with
 401.

a disproportionate number of prejudices and a heavy weight of

ideological lumber, was bound to have as its first priority the

alleviating of the problems of the economic crisis. Given the Nazis'

basic lack of originality, it was even more natural that they should

borrow - even if to intensify and distort - skeleton plans already

conceived and tentative schemes still at the experimental stage.

Thus, they based a comprehensive public works scheme on the piecemeal

expedients introduced under the Papen and Schleicher Governments, and

extended and redirected the Labour Service, begun on an official basis

under Brüning when already a concept that had been current in Germany

for over thirty years.

Certainly, the Nazis introduced new measures in their early

years of power; but the real change in the direction of their policies

came in the mid- 1930s, once the unemployment problem was under control,

and when they had had time to design their medium -term plans and were

able to begin to implement them within the framework of their long-

term objectives. The reform of senior schooling, begun in 1936 and

formalised at the beginning of 1938, is an obvious example here. But

the fundamental point is that the Nazis were indeed - as they claimed

- planning for the long term, for the "thousand -year Reich "; this is why

apparent departures from basic principles during the 1930s, and particularly

from the outbreak of war in 1939, are far less significant than has

been assumed. Critics of the Nazis both at the time and since have

delighted in pointing out inconsistencies and the apparent ease with

which points of principle were jettisoned. Such commentators overlook

the time -scale to which the Nazis were working, and their list of

priorities. Better, they felt, to sacrifice an ideal for a short time

in the immediate future, if thereby the long -term future of the

Reich
 402.

would be secured: this is why the Nazis not only tolerated, but even

energetically encouraged, the bringing of women into work once

publicly designated "unsuitable" for them, when the needs of war

seemed to demand it. Once the war was over and Germany's supremacy

assured, women would for ever be relieved of the need to work in

heavy industry and other potentially "biologically" damaging

occupations.

This, however, immediately raises another point: the regime in

fact failed to persuade women to respond adequately to its appeal for

their co- operation in the war- effort, and, furthermore, failed to

compel them to comply. This was not because the Nazis had abandoned

their immediate aim of making Germany supreme, but can be attributed to

two other factors. In the first place, in the early years of the war,

at least up to the point where German forces failed to take Moscow in

November 1941, and conceivably even later, it was still generally

believed in Germany and by the Government that a German victory was

assured and, more, was imminent. There seemed little point in forcing

women into work against their will if in the near future their

contribution would not in fact be required. More interestingly, perhaps,

in the upper echelons of the Party, at its headquarters in Munich, far

from the centre of government and remote from military and economic

Planning, the ideologues around Hess and Bormann failed to realise that

their insistence on upholding the traditional Party view that woman's

place was in the home with her family, and certainly not in heavy

industry, was incompatible with their real priority, that Germany should

establish herself in a position of European, even world, hegemony,

by force of arms if necessary. This na1vety was a source of continuing

work,
irritation and frustration to the men who had to make the system
 403.

and who could see that aims of this kind were indeed - if temporarily -

in conflict.

Thus, a man like Wilhelm Frick, a prominent member of the

NSDAP before 1933, found himself, as Reich Minister of the Interior,

in the first place defending the prerogatives of the State against

the encroachments of the Party, and then having to counter objections

to policy made on grounds of Party ideology with the plea of expediency.

On the whole, given the weight of influence against him, he tended to

fail, whether in trying to prevent the Party's monopolisation of

women's organisational activity or in trying to oppose or circumvent the

Party's demand that women be restricted to the areas assigned to them

by the Party - which did not include the higher civil service, for

example. Frick's problem was that Hitler never forgot that he was the

Party's leader as well as Germany's ruler, and his few arbitrary

pronouncements on women's affairs - on the admission of women to

legal practice, for example - reflected the primacy of ideological

considerations in his mind, even once the war and its demands suggested

that these ought to be put into cold storage for a time. In the

constant tension - or, as Schoenbaum says, "the anarchic relations "1 -

between Party and State in the Third Reich, Hitler's authority as leader

of both, and his increasing irrationality and sentimental commitment

to the NSDAP, its officers and its theories, all ensured that in most

disputed areas the Party won the day - disastrously for the "thousand-

year Reich ", as it ironically transpired.

Two other points of general interest remain. Firstly, there is

the at times almost comic insistence of the Nazis on voluntary effort

and the saving of Government money by encouraging private enterprise in

1. Schoenbaum, op. cit., p. 294.

 404.

in the furthering of the Government's aims. In the name of a spurious

- but, to many, convincing - "socialism" the Nazis wrung money out of

German citizens for the Winter Aid scheme to help the poor, rather

than release Reich funds for this purpose; the encouragement given

to students to work voluntarily and without remuneration to afford

fellow -citizens extra paid holidays was couched in the same terms, and

served much the same purpose. If employers benefited to the extent

that they did not have to provide the money for the extra holidays, the

Government had nevertheless achieved a propaganda victory without

itself putting up the money or antagonising employers by asking them

to do so. Private industry as well as the individual was, in any case,

expected to play its part in this alleged demonstration of national

solidarity. Whether or not the Government had previously brought

pressure to bear on the Reemstma cigarette company to induce it to

supplement the marriage loan for its female employees out of its own

funds1, this example was widely publicised as a model for other firms

to emulate.

The reluctance of the Government to spend money on social

projects was doubtless in part the result of its desire to devote as

much of its resources as possible to rearmament. No doubt there was

also genuine enthusiasm within the Party for the ideological aspects

of money for community purposes being raised within the community,

without overt Government direction. It is also possible, however, that

the fiscal orthodoxy of Krosigk and his advisers at the Ministry of

Finance played a part. Certainly, Krosigk was alarmed when large -scale

projects necessitated substantial Government expenditure, as he

demonstrated when the Labour Service was greatly expanded in the later

1. See above, Chapter 3, pp. 140-41.

 405.

1930s1. On a smaller scale, the Ministry of Finance felt less than

enthusiasm for the SS's scheme to pay State aid to unmarried mothers2.

But the overall picture which emerges from the visible penny- pinching

in social projects and the encouragement given to private initiatives

and voluntary efforts seems somewhat paradoxical in the light of the

Nazis' passion for imposing uniformity and nationalising as much of the

German people's activity as possible.

Finally, the failure to achieve this uniformity, to impose

total control, and to involve everyone in the life of the Nazi state,

reveals that the Nazis had not created a fully totalitarian regime,

whatever Robert Ley, for one, might claim3. They could not even

stamp out coeducation or contraception, although they had anathematised

both. Their failure was partly due to their continuing dependence on

the co- operation of the German people, and their consequent reluctance

to antagonise those who were "politically reliable ", "racially

desirable ", and who were broadly content under Nazi rule as long as it

made few demands on them. Women, particularly, had to be treated

carefully: not only were they in a unique position of influence over

the nation's youth, but, in addition, the Nazis no doubt remembered

the threat of a "Geb'drstreik" (strike against child -bearing) which had

been made before the Great War, when working -class women were urged

not to provide cannon-fodder for a regime which did not provide adequate

sustenance for their children. Thus, persuasion rather than coercion,

1. See above, Chapter 3, p. 168.

2. See above, Chapter 2, pp. 109 -10.

3. Schoenbaum, op. cit., p. 113, quotes Ley as saying: "There are

no more private citizens. The time when anybody could do or not
do what he pleased is past ".
 406.

incentives rather than threats, and withdrawal with a good grace

when opposition from the ordinary population seemed formidable, were

the tactics to which Hitler's Government was restricted. The

limitations thus imposed on Government action left a greater degree

of freedom in the Third Reich than is apparent at first sight, and

than has generally been supposed, and ensured that Nazi control of

Germany was rather less than complete.

B. International Comparisons

On the whole, it appears that women in Germany in the 1930s -

even in the Third Reich - were neither better nor worse off than

women in other countries in terms of status and opportunities. In

the Weimar years, the impression is that women were in a particularly

fortunate position: for one thing, Germany had a far higher

proportion of women legislators than most other countries.

when there were three women in the United States' Congress and six

women in the Austrian parliament, there were thirty -two female

Reichstag deputies. Again, in 1929, women constituted 1.1% of the

membership of the House of Representatives, 2.1% of the House of

Commons, and 6.7% of the Reichstag'. Still in early 1933, there were

fifteen women Members of Parliament in Britain and thirty -five women

deputies in the Reichstag2. But, as the feminists were well aware,

membership of the legislative body alone could not guarantee progress

towards equality for women. Much is made of how women lost their

1. Lowie, op. cit., p. 209.

2. "Women MPs ", The Women's Who's Who, 1933.

Report in BF, January, 1933, p. 5.

 407.

representation in the Reichstag under the Nazis, once Germany

became a one -party State; but it ought also to be remembered that in

two of Germany's neighbours, Fiance and Switzerland, women did not

even have the vote in the 1920s and 1930s.

Clearly, it is felt to be less reprehensible not to introduce

a reform than to reverse one that has taken place. Much of the time

the Nazis are - generally rightly - criticised for revoking progressive

measures, regardless of how effective they had been, and putting

German women once again in a position similar to that obtaining in

countries where reforms had not been effected. Perhaps the outstanding

example of this is the law of 30 June, 1933, which permitted the

dismissal of married women from the civil service and departure from

the principle of equal pay for men and women in civil service

positionsl. But in Britain, for example, women had been, and were

still being, discriminated against in these areas: it has already

been observed that British women had to wait until the mid -1950s before

equal pay in the civil service was introduced2, while married women

were - other than exceptionally - banned from the teaching profession

until after the Butler Act of 19443 The implication, then, is that

Germany of the Weimar Republic was in the vanguard of those countries

which accepted a more equitable position for women in public and

professional life.

But the problem in Germany in the 1920s, as the feminists never

tired of complaining, was that the Weimar Constitution, which affirmed

1. See above, Chapter 5, pp. 281 -82.

2. Ibid., p. 255.

3. H. C. Dent, The Education Act, 1944, London, 1964, p. 35.

 408.

equality of the sexes in education, in civil service appointments, and

in terms of remuneration in the professions, was not the law of the

land; it was possible at times to ignore its provisions, or at

least to try to circumvent them, as Bavaria and Wurttemberg did in

the case of married women teachers in the 1920s1. Where the intentions

of the Constitution were observed, progress in winning a more

equitable position for women was slow; but those who imagined that it

could be otherwise were surely naive. In the Soviet Union, too, where

the Constitutions of 1918 and 1936 declared equality of rights

between the sexes, men continued to hold a near -monopoly of the

senior administrative positions, although women did increase their

representation significantly in administrative and professional

positions which carried less authority and responsibility2. Indeed,

women quickly came to dominate - numerically, if not in terms of

authority - the medical profession; but it is suggested that this was

because doctors were poorly paid in the Soviet Unions.

Certainly, if there was no distinction between the sexes as

regards professional opportunities in some other countries - for

example, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and Iceland, as well as the Soviet

Union - in two of Germany's western neighbours, France and Belgium,

the professions were not universally open to women; in addition, in

other countries, including Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Norway (until 1938)

La
and the Netherlands, there remained restrictions on women's eligibility

1. See above, Chapter 5, p. 262.

2. M. Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled, London, 1963, p. 377.

3. Maurice Larkin, Gathering Pace, London, 1969, p. 292.

 409.

for professional positions throughout the inter -war years. In

Austria, under the Dollfuss regime, an order was issued in 1933

which was very similar to the German law of 30 June, 1933,

restricting opportunities for married women in the civil service1.

Germany was, in fact, in the majority camp in the 1930s, with the

Nazis' more reactionary measures well according with the trend in the

many other European countries which in the 1920s and 1930s were

falling under right -wing dictatorships.

Reactionary measures included the attempt to eliminate

abortion and contraception in the Third Reich, a policy that was

being followed in other European countries, particularly the

predominantly Roman Catholic ones. In France, for example, where there

was, as in Germany, deep concern about the declining birth rate,

abortion was illegal and harsh penalties were provided in the Penal

Code for offenders. In 1920, a law was passed which provided that

those manufacturing, selling or advocating contraceptive devices could

be punished by a fine or imprisonment; it was to this obstacle to

effective contraception that a rate of abortion estimated at between

300,000 and 500,000 per year during the 1930s was largely attributed.

The one concession made was that therapeutic abortion - where the

life of the mother was endangered - was permitted in 1939; but it

was in the same year that the Code de la Famille sanctioned the

imposition of more severe penalties for those selling abortifacients

and contraceptives. No doubt influenced by war-time German policy2,

the French Government in 1942 made abortion a crime carrying very

1. Douie, op. cit., pp. 10 -14, 20.

2. See above, Chapter 2, pp. 93 -94.

 410.

severe penalties, including the possibility of the death penaltyl.

Toleration of abortion and free access to contraceptive

advice were generally associated with Communism and, above all,

Soviet Russia. Certainly, the Draconian penalties for abortion in

Tsarist Russia were revoked by decree immediately after the

Bolshevik Revolution, and in November 1920 abortion was formally

legalised2. But those who criticised this policy as "licentious"

failed to add that the Soviet authorities regarded abortion as an

evil, but one which would remain until adequate contraceptive

provision obviated the need for it. It was less because this

desideratum had been achieved than because of the growing international

tension of the 1930s that abortion was banned in the 1936 Constitution

of the Soviet Union; the raising of the birth rate became in the

USSR, as in Hitler's Germany, a major official preoccupation, and

Stalin's Government, again like Hitler's, offered at the same time

a number of incentives for procreation. The carnage of the Second

World War led to the provision of more, and more attractive, incentives

in 1944 to encourage the citizens of the USSR to compensate for the

immense losses, in the field and among civilians3.

To this extent, dictatorships of "left" and "right" followed

similar, even identical, policies: Mussolini, too, imposed heavy

penalties for abortion and the dissemination of contraceptive advice,

and offered tax incentives and allowances to large families to encourage

procreation. Again like Hitler and the Soviet regime he provided

1. C. Watson, "Birth Control and Abortion in France since 1939 ",

Population Studies, 1951 -52, pp. 261 -68.

2. Halle, op. cit., p. 39.

3. Schlesinger, op. cit., pp. 269 -79, 371 -72.

 411.
improved welfare for mothers and infants, and attempted to remove

the stigma from unmarried motherhood'. If their attitude towards

abortion and contraception was repressive and harsh, the dictators

gave the impression - for bellicose motives, no doubt - that they

were more enlightened in matters of social welfare than most

democratic governments, including the British ones in the inter -war

years.

C. Women in German Society in the 1930s

It is possible, but it would be misleading, to compile a

balance -sheet of comparisons of women's position in 1930 with that in

1940. One could, for example, point to the contrast between the

mounting opposition to the employment of married women in all areas,

from industry to the professions, in the depression years at the

start of the decade, and the growing urgency with which attempts were

made to persuade married as well as single women to enter employment

in the later 1930s, particularly once Germany went to war in the

autumn of 1939. Indeed the former situation reveals prejudice, but

if this was to some extent a legacy of the German past, in which

working-class men as well as members of the middle and upper classes

had disliked the appearance of women in large numbers in employment

outside the home, its extent in the late 1920s and early 1930s was

primarily an automatic response to the desperate economic situation

in which job opportunities only diminished in the inexorable

deflationary spiral. The changed attitude of the later 1930s was not

1. S. W. Halperin, Mussolini and Italian Fascism, New York, 1964,

pp. 63 -64.

I.L.O. Yearbook, 1937 -38, pp. 260 -62.

 412.

a reflection of enlightenment, of a desire to encourage women to

realise their individual potential outside the home, but was rather

indicative of the Government's desire to harness the nation's

resources to the war-machine it was determined to construct. It is

to be hoped that this study has shown that the situation in Germany

in both 1930 and 1940 was highly abnormal, with an unprecedented

shortage of jobs in the earlier year and a shortage of labour in the

latter year which had developed quickly and showed signs of only

becoming more acute. Thus, the extent of the prejudice in 1930 was

abnormal in the Weimar context, just as the attempt ten years later

to winkle housebound wives and mothers out of their domestic routine,

and into the factory or the field, was an emergency measure as far

as the Nazis were concerned, one which was not expected to continue

once the national crisis of the war was over.

It is, however, possible only to surmise what the position of

women in a "thousand -year Reich" would have been. Clearly, the

Nazis' chief concern with women was for their capacity as child -

bearers. Women with a full -time job might be reluctant to start

or add to a family, and so women were to be encouraged to give up

work to spend their time in the home, and to have many children in

order to fill this time. Girls with an academic education might be

reluctant to forego the opportunity of an interesting, responsible,

and possibly well -paid career, even if they were married; accordingly,

the emphasis was to be shifted away from the study of academic subjects,

and where a preponderance of these remained in a curriculum, girls

were also to be reminded of their maternal role at every opportunity,

by taking compulsory courses in domestic science and by mixing socially

in the organisations and usefully in the Labour Service with girls and
 413.

women from different backgrounds, who would be more interested in

human relationships than in physics or foreign languages. Above all,

women were to be kept physically healthy for child - bearing, and had

therefore to be removed from work that was actually or potentially

damaging to their reproductive capacity.

The motive was world domination; one of the means to this was

to be a dramatic increase in the population, by means of creating an

atmosphere in which procreation was considered natural and was

rewarded in both material and psychological terms, and by attempting to

make any means of conception control beyond total abstinence from

sexual intercourse unavailable. But some of the side -effects were

desirable. For example, the Nazis were considered puritanical in their

condemnation of tobacco and alcohol - no doubt partly influenced by

Hitler's abstinence from and aversion to them1 - but they were

medically correct in urging pregnant women not to smoke or drink

alcohol. While the Nazis claimed to advocate temperance rather than

abstinence with regard to alcohol, they were uncompromising in their

opposition to cigarette smoking2, at a time when it was accepted as

fashionable among women as well as men, and before the health hazards

directly connected with it were widely accepted. Foreigners were

mildly amused by the zeal of some of the Party faithful in

encouraging café's to hang notices prominently on their premises bearing

the legend "The German woman does not smoke "3, but it was the Rector

1. Kelley, op. cit., pp. 178, 190 -91.

2. Erich Bruns, "Die Bekámpfung des Alcohol- und Nikotinmissbrauchs

und die deutsche Frau", NS- Frauenwarte, 1938, p. 599.

1933.
3. "'Die deutsche Frau raucht nicht?", FZ, 1 May,

Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Europe I Saw, London, 1968, p. 34,

Trooper "snatched a
relates how in Berlin in March 1933, a Storm
my mouth, informing me that the
cigarette I was smoking from
Fahrer disapproved of women smoking ".
 414.
of Erlangen University, whose own field was medicine, who stated

unequivocally that "For a woman, smoking is without doubt a vice "1

Another aspect of social mores which seemed to the Nazis to

have implications for the birth rate was women's clothing. They

condemned the foreign influences - of Paris and the United States -

which, they claimed, had encouraged German women to adopt a style of

dressing that was either frivolous or else an imitation of men's

clothes, and was in any case decadent and not conducive to a healthy

rate of population growth ( "fortpflanzungsfeindlich"); the reasoning

behind this assertion was not explained2. To give guidance about the

kind of clothing that was considered desirable in the Nazi State, the

German Fashion Bureau was opened in Berlin in the spring of 1933,

under the honorary presidency of Magda Goebbels3, who claimed that

she was "trying to make the German woman more beautiful "4. At first,

there was emphasis on the creation of a "German style" for German

women5, but the women's magazines continued to carry fashion articles

featuring clothes which were considered fashionable in Paris and

London, and eventually in 1937 the D W denied that there had been,

or should be, attempts to devise a "German style "6. These ideas,

however, were not new in the 1930s; during the Great War there had been

criticism of the "improper" clothes some women and girls were wearing,

and the call went out for the creation of a "German style ". The

1. H. Wintz, "Die Frau und das Rauchen ", Schriften des "Verein
Deutsche Volksheilkunde e.V. ", Nuremberg, 1938.

2. Agnes Gerlach, "Klarheit in Modefragen", DAZ, 23 July, 1933.

3. "Ein deutsches Mode-Amt ", Vossische Zeitung, 11 June, 1933.

4. "Frau Goebbels über die deutsche Frauen ", Vossische Zeitung, 6

July, 1933.

5. "Ziel und Aufbau des deutschen Modeamtes ", FZ, 5 July, 1933.

6. "Keine eigene 'Deutsche. Mode", PZ, 23 April, 1937.

 415.

objections were against something which was clearly too terrible to

be described explicitly, but the implication was that new styles were

being adopted which were at once unpatriotic - presumably imported

from enemy countries - and morally riskyl.

The ideal type of woman in Nazi theory was the peasant wife,

whose peaceful, wholesome life was devoted to her work on the land and,

above all, her family. The picture of this woman at her spinning-

wheel2 was offered as the alternative to the city-bred chic

sophisticates of the decadent 1920s. To encourage the simple

perfection embodied - it was quite unrealistically believed - in this

rural figure, edicts were issued castigating and ridiculing those

women who "shave their eyebrows, use rouge, dye their hair" in an

altogether foreign manner3. The Party's puritans conducted a

vigorous campaign against cosmetics, although Hitler was apparently

not averse to women's using them4. Himmler, however, maintained

a strict attitude, giving instructions that the mothers in the SS's

Lebensborn homes should not be permitted to use lipstick, to paint

their nails, or to shave their eyebrows5. It was further made clear

1. "Planmässiger Kampf gegen Wtirdelosigkeit im weiblichen Geschlecht,

von einem Beobachter am Wege ", Frankfurter Zeitgemasse Brosch-
tiren, January 1916, pp. 2 -4.

2. Hildegard von Rheden, "Bauerlicher Hausfleiss aus Blut und Boden ",
VB, 2 February, 1936.

3. "Muckertum und geschminkten Frauen", DAZ, 15 November, 1933.

4. Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler was my Friend, London, 1955, pp. 141 -42,
describes Hitler's taste in women's appearance thus: "If he had
any preference at all, then I should say that it was a leaning
towards the elegant, slim figure. Nor did he object to lipstick
and painted fingernails, which were so scornfully castigated in
Party circles ".
of
5. IfZ, Fa 202, frame 78, letter from "Dr. E." to the Council
Lebensborn, 6 September, 1940.
 416.

that the SS expected the future wives of its members to demonstrate

their wholesomeness by achieving the Reich Sport Medal, since the

kind of woman who was suitable for the nation's elite to marry was

not the one

"who can dance nicely through five -o'clock teas, but

who has proved her fitness by sports activity. For
good health, the javelin or the pole -vault are of more
value than the lipstick "1.

This motif ran throughout Nazi speeches about women2 - naturally

enough, since it was directly relevant to the function regarded as

most important, child- bearing, the function to which all Nazi

thought about women was ultimately related.

It is this consistent obsession that renders comprehensible

some of the apparent inconsistencies in Nazi thought and practice;

for example, while some Nazis undoubtedly took a more puritanical

view of social and sexual life than others, there was general

acceptance that the family was the essential basic unit of society,

to be maintained and protected by every possible means. But the very

existence of the family was an obstacle to the Nazis' attempt at

totalitarian control, and so the Nazi organisations had to try to

exert some influence over individual members of the family in the

hope that the family unit as a whole would be permeated by National

Socialist ideas and would grow in corporate loyalty to the Nazi

regime. A strict line of demarcation was, however, to be drawn

1. SS Obergruppenftthrer Jeckeln, "Ein Wort an die Frauen ", FZ, 1

June, 1937.

2. E.g., Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, "Die Frau im nationalsozialistisch -

en Staat ", VB, 9 September, 1934.

"Die Körperschulung und deren Wichtigkeit für die Frauen ",

NS- Frauenwarte, 1938, p. 587.
 417.

between business and pleasure: Hess repeatedly reminded Party

members that they were not allowed to wear Party uniform when out

on social occasions with women, unless the function was an official

one to which wives were invited. Hess particularly condemned

those who wore Party uniform when taking their wives for a ride in

a car, and ordered that on no account was a woman to be driven in

an open car with her husband when he was in uniform1. This

potential source of petty family friction was, however, trivial

compared with the apparent threat to the family unit by some

Nazi social policies.

The more tolerant attitude towards unmarried motherhood2

and the introduction of "irretrievable breakdown" as a ground for

divorce3 in the Third Reich alarmed some of those who had believed

Nazi promises of restoring respectability to German life after the

permissiveness of the Weimar Republic. They were, in fact, policies

which were more similar to those of liberals and even Communists

than to the standard Christian morality of those conservatives who

had supported Hitler in preference to socialists of any colour. No

doubt Himmler and the SS and Hess were in a minority in the NSDAP in

positively encouraging unmarried motherhood, but the Party clearly,

after some initial hesitation, moved to a position where it accepted

that motherhood was desirable, therefore those women who became mothers

out of wedlock should not be discriminated against, even if they should

neither be acclaimed as examples worthy of imitation. The result was

1. IfZ, Db 15.02, "Anordnung 214/35 ", 5 November, 1935, signed by

Hess, with express orders that it was not for publication.

2. See above, Chapter 2, pp. 99 -110.

3. Ibid., pp. 72 -73.

 418.

more humane treatment of unmarried mothers, of the kind advocated

particularly by radical feminists both before and after the Great

War and by Communists, in imitation of the Soviet Russian example.

On the whole, the Nazis recognised that there was an implicit

contradiction in their claim to be upholding the family unit and

their attempt to diminish prejudice against the unmarried mother;

but their overriding desire for children led them to welcome any

"racially valuable" child, regardless of the marital status of its

parents, and therefore to value the parents themselves.

Population policy, again, underlay the peculiar situation which

arose from the Nazis' being more concerned with the health and

welfare of women workers than some of the avowed champions of women's

rights. While the Communists and the Socialists were, like the Nazis,

anxious to develop schemes of labour protection for women, particularly

for pregnant women and nursing mothers, the radical feminists

the Open Door International, who were the first to claim that the

Nazis had no regard for women and aimed to subject them fully to

male domination, denied that special provision for women's welfare was

anything other than a device for discriminating against women'. Thus,

the most militant feminists were prepared to countenance a situation

where women and girls were free to work during the day or at night

for as many hours as they chose, regardless of the damage they might

do to their health. Indeed, they, along with the Communists,

demanded equal pay for equal work, which might have discouraged

employers from using women for heavy work since men were more

obviously fitted for it; but it was the Nazis who actually introduced

1. See above, Chapter 3, p. 119.

 419.

equal pay in some cases for this very purpose1. And the radical

feminists never suggested that their aim in agitating for equal

pay was to discourage employers from using female labour on the

same terms as male. In the end - always for the natalist motive -

the Nazis showed more concern for the physical well-being of women.

Perhaps this helps to account for the acceptance of the

Nazis by women generally, and even by some of those who had been

opposed to the Nazis in the pre -1933 period. Three former DVP

Reichstag deputies, Doris Hertwig-Bunger2, Elsa Matz3 and Clara

Mende4, apparently came to terms with the regime to the extent of

applying for Party membership and working in Nazi organisations.

Doris Hertwig-Bunger was admitted to the NSDAP in 1937, and was also

a member of other organisations, including the NSF, in which she was

recognised as a particularly active and diligent member, thoroughly

"politically reliable"5. Elsa Matz became a Party member as early as

May 1933, on the recommendation of the Berlin Gau leadership of the

NSDAP6. Clara Mende had been too outspoken against the Nazis before

1933 to be admitted to the Party even in 1938, but she had been a

1. Ibid., p. 144.

2. Born in 1882, a senior school teacher and leader of women's

organisations in the Weimar period. Horkenbach, op. cit., p. 681.

3. Born in 1881, a senior school teacher and president of the DYP's

Women's Committee. Reichstags- Handbuch, Berlin, 1930, p. 417.

4. Born in 1869, headmistress of a domestic science school and

adviser in the Ministry of Economics in 1929 -32. Horkenbach, op.
cit., p. 714.

BDC, Gestapo report on Doris Hertwig-Bunger, 27 December,

1940.
5.

Gauschatzmeister
6. Ibid., Partei -Kanzlei Korrespondenz, letter to the
of Mark Brandenburg, 5 February, 1940.
 420.

member of the NSF since 1934 and was the Berlin Gau's expert on

domestic science training in the NSV1. If the DVP was in truth a

conservative party, these women must nevertheless have had to

compromise their former views in order to co- operate with the Nazi

regime to the extent that they did; no doubt personal ambition

facilitated this, but it seems reasonable to infer that they also

found elements in Nazism which positively, and not necessarily

wrongly, recommended themselves to them.

There were, of course, those who could not fully accept the

Nazi system, and who would never be fully acceptable to the Nazis. Of

those who were so unacceptable as to be unable to continue to work in

Germany and who were also possibly in personal danger, some, like

Marie Juchacz2 and Anna Siemsen3, both of the SPD, returned to Germany

after exile abroad during the Third Reich, while others, like Alice

Salomon4, remained abroad for the rest of their lives. Of those who

stayed, often at great personal risk, Hilde Benjamin, the former

lawyer who suffered imprisonment for her part in the Communist

underground, was given the position of attorney general in Berlin under

the Soviet Military Administration in 19455. Marie -Elisabeth 'Alders,

one of Gertrud Bäumer's associates, was also imprisoned because of some

1. Ibid., Gestapo report to the President of the Reich Chamber of

Journalists, 26 April, 1938.

2. Max Schwarz, MdR, Hanover, 1965, p. 684.

3. Kosch, op. cit., p. 1110.

4. Ibid., p. 1060.

5. Stockhorst, op. cit., p. 51.

 421
of the material she had published; after the war, she worked with the

United States' occupation authorities before returning to politics as

a Free Democrat. As the oldest member of the Bundestag in 1953, she was

its President, as well as being Honorary President of the Free

Democratic Party1.

Gertrud Bäumer herself seems to have managed to arrive at a

modus vivendi with the Nazi regime. Indeed, she continued to criticise

it in her private correspondence, but even there she insisted that

there were aspects of National Socialism that were acceptable; this

attitude drew criticism from her friend Dorothee von Velsen, who

objected above all to the fundamental lack of freedom in the Nazi

State, as well as to the anti -semitism, brutality and opportunism of

the regime. If open opposition was impossible, Dorothee von Velsen

argued that that was no reason to co- operate with Gertrud Scholtz -Klink;

"silent opposition" was, she felt, the only honourable course2.

Gertrud Bäumer, however, still looked for signs of feminism in the

Nazi women's organisation, claiming to discern traces of it among the

leaders of the Women's Labour Service in 19403, and with the hope of

encouraging a sense of female independence and solidarity she insisted

that her magazine, Die Frau, must abstain from open criticism - even

of the SS's encouragement to girls to procreate outside marriage4 - and

political comment of any kind. No doubt she was sensible to be cautious,

1. Kosch, op. cit., pp. 792 -93.

2. BA, Kl.Erw., no. 296 -(1), letter from Dorothee von Velsen to
Gertrud Bäumer, 21 November, 1936.

3. Ibid., no. 267 -(2), letter from Gertrud Baumer to Emmy Beckmann,
17 October, 1940.

4. Ibid., no. 296 -(1), letter from Gertrud Baumer to

Dorothee von
Velsen, 4 April, 1940.
 422.
having been struck off the list of those permitted to edit

magazines for almost two years1, but her apparent readiness to

co- operate with the National Women's Leadership, albeit on minor

matters2, suggests something more than prudence. Her priority was to

try to keep the spirit and activity of the old Women's Movement alive

at all costs, in however small a way, and to try to infiltrate some

of its ideas into Frau Scholtz- Klink's organisation. She rather

deluded herself in imagining that this was possible - or relevant, given

the lack of influence of the Nazi women's organisation. And her

policy here was little understood and less welcomed by those

women who had formerly admired and supported her and who started

from the premise that National Socialism was inherently evil, and that

any kind of compromise with it was out of the questions.

Perhaps the failure to reconstruct a Women's Movement out of

the remains of Gertrud BRumer's organisation after the Second World

War was a reflection of its being discredited by at least tacit

co- operation with the Nazis. Certainly, Gertrud Bäumer herself did

1. Beckmann, op. cit., letter from Gertrud BRumer to Emmy Beckmann,

May 1935 (exact date not given), p. 82.

BA, op. cit., no. 267 -(1), letter from Gertrud Bäumer to Emmy
Beckmann, 19 March, 1937.

2. Ibid., letter from Gertrud BRumer to Emmy Beckmann, 14 September,

1938.

Ibid., no. 267 -(2), letter of 17 October, 1940.

3. Ibid., no. 296 -(1), letter from Dorothee von Velsen to Gertrud
BRumer, 24 May, 1939.

Ibid., letter from Dorothee von Velsen to Gertrud Bä,umer, 11 April,

1940.
 423.

not return to a position of próminence, dying in 1954 at the age of

eighty1. But her concern with the young generation of women2 was

perhaps belated, since the Women's Movement had suffered from a

generation problem before the Nazi takeover of power, and might in

any case have died out with its old leadership. There was, in fact,

a vacuum in women's organisational life after 1945, until new

groupings emerged, since Frau Scholtz -Klink's organisation was,

naturally, disbanded and discredited. The National Women's Leader,

too, disappeared into obscurity, after successfully evading arrest

with her third husband, former SS officer Heissmeyer, until March

1948, and then serving an eighteen -month sentence after trial by

a French military court3.

It is one of the many ironies of National Socialism that its

policies and its defeat created a situation in which discrimination

against women in many areas, particularly in employment, was not a

practical proposition. The need for many women to assume the role

of breadwinner after the Second World War, in the absence of men who

were dead, incapacitated, or in prison, led to the opening up of

new opportunities for women in the Federal Republic4. In the

Democratic Republic, that which so many of the Nazis' supporters had

feared above all, and which the Nazis had been pledged to prevent, the

victory of Communism, has meant that there has been a much more

1. Das Grosse Brockhaus, 1967, vol. 2, p. 393.

2. BA, op. cit., no. 267 -(2), letter from Gertrud Bgumer to Emmy
Beckmann, 17 October, 1940.

3. Wiener Library Personality File G15, reports on Gertrud Scholtz-

Klink in several newspapers, e.g., New York Times, 3 February,
1948; Neue Zeitung, 18 November, 1948, Die Welt,, 18 November,
1949; New York Herald Tribune, 18 November, 1949.

4. B. Rich, "Civil Liberties in Germany ", Political Science Quarterly,

1950, p. 81.
 424.

decisive change of policy, so that women have - within the limits of

a new dictatorship - equal rights and equality of opportunityl. The

Nazis, then, unwittingly acted as the agents of the kind of changes

they had aimed to prevent or reverse, and women became more self -

reliant and were accorded a greater degree of legal and social equality.

But the Nazis had certainly given the impression of arresting

developments in the direction of greater equality for women; it

remains to decide how far this was true.

In the first place, progress was made in improving

opportunities for women even before 1914, notably in education;

"emancipation" did not suddenly begin in 1918. Then, after the

Great War far less progress was made than feminists had hoped and

conservatives had feared. Indeed, certain areas of activity were

opened to women for the first time, including full participation in

politics and entry to the legal profession. But the progress made in

winning real influence for women in politics and significant

representation for them in professions other than teaching - where they

were already well- established - was slow and gradual, as it was

bound to be, while the provisions of the Imperial Civil Code continued

to affirm the superiority of the male sex in society, and especially in

marriage. In addition, no sooner were modest reforms introduced

after the Great War than the forces of reaction asserted themselves,

so that German women - insofar as they were interested - were, like

the nation as a whole, bitterly divided between those who resented

even cautious change, associating it with "Bolshevism ", and those who
Even
poured contempt on the small improvements that were effected.

was the best course,

moderate feminists, who accepted that evolution

p. 219.
1. David Childs, East Germany, New York, 1969,
 425.

but a slow one, began to be disillusioned by the later 1920s, and

to be alarmed in the early 1930s when the effects of the depression

seemed to many justification - or an excuse - for a retreat from the

Weimar Constitution's commitment to equal rights for members of both

sexes. The conservatives, the Churches, and even some trade unionists

were very ready to see in, for example, deliberate discrimination

against the employed married woman the solution to Germany's

problems which were, in the view of the Churches and the conservatives,

at least, not merely of an economic nature but political and moral

as well.

Thus, the clock was stopped not in 1933 but in 1930. The

Nazis, with their at times weird backward -looking philosophy, benefited

from attitudes which had already developed and hardened, and found

at least tacit - and often open - support for their promised policy

of restoring women to a position of security, decency and domesticity.

But it was not their intention, they repeatedly asserted, to restrict

women to the traditional "three K's" - "Kinder, Kiiche, Kirche" (nursery,

kitchen, church)1 - as conservatives hoped. Once again, German

conservatives had mistaken the Nazis for old -style, nationalist

reactionaries like themselves, failing to comprehend the essentially

revolutionary nature of Nazism. Certainly, in the Nazi State women

were to concern themselves to a considerable degree with children and

with household matters; but a regime which aspired to totalitarian

control had to urge all its citizens to look outward from their private

1. The "three K's" appear in many different places, in a variety of

forms. The one given is the most common of these. In Imperial
times, mention was sometimes made of "four K's ", the additional
one being for "Kaiser ".
 426.

lives, to surrender their privacy and allow themselves to be

imbued with the Nazi Weltanschauun, and to accept the primacy of the

needs of the State as interpreted by the Nazi leadership. Thus,

German women were to be less "requisites of German men "1 than -

like German men - agents at the disposal of the Nazi regime. It

was crucial to women's position that the needs of the regime became

such that women could be discriminated against to only a very

limited extent.

In the Third Reich, men were, after all, controlled and

confined to the same extent as women, and often, given the relative

immunity of the housewife from official surveillance, even more. If

men monopolised positions of power in the Nazi State, only a

minority of men exercised power, and the great mass of men were

excluded in the same way as women. Male and female opponents and

of racist policies discriminated against and

persecuted on an equal basis. Certainly the Nazis were determined

to persuade as many women as possible - in the early years, at least

- that their natural sphere of activity was the home and family;

but it is often overlooked that the majority of women choose to

marry and have children in the absence of official pressure to do so.

The Nazis were starting their campaign with the advantage of women's

biological character and natural disposition on their side. Their

aim was to reverse the evident trend towards contempt for the "nur-

Hausfrau" (the woman who is "only a housewife "), which was a side -

effect of the provision of more opportunities for women outside the

1. Hans- Jochen Gamm, Der Fliisterwitz im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1966,

p. 50, gives one of the popular corruptions of the BdM's initials
as "Bedarfsartikel deutscher Männer ".
 427.

home. In this, they to some extent succeeded; where they were

wrong was in trying to coerce women into complying with their

policy, by limiting opportunities outside the home and by trying to

remove all means of birth control.

Attempts to limit opportunities for women outside the home

were made, at a time when the massive unemployment problem made them

doubly attractive. But the change which came in the economic situation

in the mid -1930s made even the campaign against employed married

women first redundant and then positively harmful. Similarly,

the steps taken to reduce the academic content of girls' school

curricula - a reaction against the strong emphasis there had been on

academic ability after the Great War - proved to be damaging even

before the Second World War gave rise to an urgent demand for girl

students in all disciplines. In the later 1930s, women were not only

to be given the opportunity to work and to study, whether they were

married or single, but were to be positively encouraged to do these

things. The motive was, as ever, the serving of the needs of the

Nazi State at the time, not the improvement of opportunities for

women; but such an improvement was in fact a result. The unrealistic

and purely ideologically-motivated barriers to women's advancement in

the highest échelons of the civil service and to the practice of law

by women were indeed indicative of what was, in the Nazi view, ideal,

and of what would no doubt have been their aim in the "thousand -year

Reich ", if other policies had permitted it. But these instances were

exceptions, and the result of the abnormal 1930s - abnormal in

political and economic terms and culminating in war - was that

women's position in employment outside the home, including the

not eroded, while, in addition,

professions as a whole, was consolidated,

raised.
the status of the housewife and mother was
 428.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Primary Sources

For only one area of this thesis is there a compact collection of

documents; this is the Nazi women's organisation, for which the

Schumacher Sammlung, no. 230 (NS Frauen)

is a rich source of information. Substantial parts of the Schumacher

Sammlung, 230, are to be found in the Bundesarchiv and the Berlin

Document Center. Chapter 6, particularly, draws heavily on this

source. The NSDAP Hauptarchiv, to be found in the archive of the

Wiener Library, provides the only other collection of material about

women, and it is very limited in both size and scope. Otherwise, the

documentary material relating to women in Germany is, while plentiful,

very scattered indeed. To some extent in the Bundesarchiv, and more

particularly in the Institut far Zeitgeschichte, it has been

necessary to sift through a large mass of material in order to discover

a few relevant documents. This has, however, sometimes been very

rewarding; the outstanding example of this is the reports of Himmler's

security agents throughout Germany which were made regularly from

October 1939. Dr. Heinz Boberach has published some of those in the

Bundesarchiv, but a large mass remains there, in the R58 files, while

there is a particularly rich collection of these documents in the

Institut far Zeitgeschichte, on the MA 441 rolls of microfilm. These

shed considerable illumination on women's position in the early years

of the war, particularly with regard to employment. The information

about individual women provided by the records of the Berlin Document

Center have been particularly valuable, while the correspondence of

Gertrud Baumer, in the Bundesarchiv, has also been a useful source.

 429.

Archival material, listed under each archive:

Bundesarchiv, Koblenz

Schumacher Sammlung: no. 230 - NS Frauen

251 - BdM

257 - Hitler Jugend

262 - Arbeitsdienst

279 -1 - NSDStB

R2 Reichsfinanzministerium

R18 Reichsministerium des Innern

R22 Reichsjustizministerium

R36 Deutscher Gemeindetag

R43 Reichskanzlei

R451I DVP, 1918 -33

R451II DDP, 1918 -33

R451V KPD, 1919 -45

R58 Sicherheitspolizei und politischer Nachrichtendienst

(including the Meldungen aus dem Reich)

R61 Akademie für Deutsches Recht

NS 15 Beauftragter des Ffhrers für die Überwachung det

gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung
und Erziehung der NSDAP, 1934-45

NSD 3/5 Verfügungen, Anordnungen, Bekanntgaben

NSD 17/RAK Rassenpolitische Auslands-Korrespondenz

NSD 30/1836 Informationsdienst fifr die soziale Arbeit der NSV

Nachlass Katharina von Kardorff

Nachlass Georg Gothein

Kleine Erwerbungen - nos. 258 -(1), 258 -(2), 267 -(1), 267 -(2), 296 -(1)
- the correspondence of Gertrud Bäumer with Marianne
Weber, Emmy Beckmann, and Dorothee von Velsen
 430.

Berlin Document Center

Schumacher Sammlung: no. 211 - Partei Archiv

212 - Reichsbund der Kinderreichen

230 - NS Frauen

Akten des Obersten Parteigerichts, no. 2684/34

Miscellaneous Personnel Files

Institut faix Zeitgeschichte, Munich

Fa 202

MA 47 MA 306 MA 441

MA135 MA 387 MA 609

MA 205 MA 388 MA 644

MA 253 MA 422 MA 1163

The reports of Himmler's agents, Berichten zur innenpolitischen

Lage and Meldungen aus dem Reich, appear under MA. 441.

Wiener Library, London

NSDAP Hauptarchiv, Reel 13 and Reel 37

Personality File G15

Dossier on Gertrud Scholtz-Klink

2. Newspapers, magazines and periodicals

Archiv fair Bevölkerungspolitik, Sexualethik und Familienkunde

Archiv für Frauenkunde und Eugenetik

Das schwarze Korps

Der Angriff
 431.
Der Deutsche, 1934

Der Deutsche Student

Deutsche Hochschulstatistik

Deutsche Madchenbildung, 1934

Deutsche Schulerziehung

Deutsche Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung

Deutscher Hochschulführer

Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, 1938

Deutsches Frauenschaffen

Die Arbeit

Die Bayerische Frau

Die Deutsche H3here Schule

Die Frau

Die Frau im Staat

Fränkische Tageszeitung

Frankfurter Zeitung

Frauenkultur im Deutschen Frauenwerk

Gewerkschaftszeitung, 1930

ILO Yearbook, 1937/38

International Labour Review

Internationales Jahrbuch für Geschichtsunterricht, 1961/62

Jahrbuch des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes

Keesing's Contemporary Archives, vol. X, 1955/56

Nachrichtendienst der Reichsfrauenführerin

N.S. Frauenwarte

Population Studies

Reichsarbeitsblatt

Reichsgesetzblatt
 432.

Statistik des Deutschen Reiches

Statistisches Jahrbuch far das Deutsche Reich

Statistisches Jahrbuch far die Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Vierteljahrshefte far Statistik des Deutschen Reiches

Völkischer Beobachter

Westdeutscher Beobachter

Wirtschaft und Statistik

Wissen und Dienst, 1935

The Wiener Library's filed collection of newspaper cuttings is an

invaluable source; from it, extracts have been cited from newspapers
which do not appear on the above list, e.g. from the Vossische Zeitung.

3. Articles 1) signed

Aikin -Sneath, F. B., "The Press in Modern Germany ", German Life and
Letters, 1937

Barton, J. L., "Questions on the Divorce Reform Act of 1969 ", Law
Quarterly Review, 1970

Benz, Wolfgang, "Vom freiwilligen Arbeitsdienst zur Arbeitsdienstpflicht ",

Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1968

Brandes, 0. Jean, "The Effect of the War on the German Family ", Social
Forces, 195051

Brook- Shepherd, Gordon, "More Noises from the Bunker ", Sunday Telegraph,
15 July, 1973

Cole, Taylor, "The Evolution of the German Labour Front ", Political
Science Quarterly, 1937

Epstein, Klaus, "The Zentrum Party in the Weimar Republic ", (review
article of Rudolf Morsey,'Die deutsche Zentrumspartei 1917 -1923 ",
Düsseldorf, 1966), Journal of Modern History, 1967

Feest, Johannes, "Die Bundesrichter", W. Zapf (ed.), Beitrage zur

Analyse der deutschen Oberschicht, Tübingen, 1964
 433.

Fiehler, Karl, "Sozialgesetzgebung", Nationalsozialistisches

Jahrbuch, 1927

FCihr, Christoph, "Schulpolitik im Spannungsfeld zwischen Reich und

Ländern: Das Scheitern der Schulreform in der Weimarer
Republik ", Das Parlament, 17 October, 1970

Gottschewski, Lydia, "Zur Einfuhrung ", Die Deutsche Frauenfront,

August 1933

Grunberger, Richard, "Lebensborn ", Bulletin of the Wiener Library,

July 1962.

Grunfeld, Judith, "Women Workers in Nazi Germany ", Nation, 13 March,

1937

Hamilton, Alice, "Woman's Place in Germany ", Survey Graphic, January

1934

Harden, Maximilian, in Die Zukunft, 24 August, 1918

Hellersberg, Maria, "Die soziale Not der weiblichen Angestellten ",

Gewerkschaftsbund der Angestellten (ed.), "Die soziale Not
der weiblichen Angestellten", Berlin, 1928

Hirschfeld, Julius, "The Law of Divorce in England and Germany ",

Law _guarterly Review, 1897

Kater, Michael, "Krisis des Frauenstudiums in der 'Weimarer Republik",

Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1972

Lode, M., "Women under Hitler's Yoke ", The Communist International,
November, 1938

Lorenz, Charlotte, "Die gewerbliche Frauenarbeit während des Krieges ",

Shotwell, James T. (general ed.), Der Krieg und die
Arbeitsverhältnisse, Stuttgart, 1928

Luders, Else, "Weibliche Aufsicht in Fabriken ", Die deutsche Kämpferin,

August 1935

Michalke, Otto, "Die Frauenarbeit", Jahrbucher fur National8Skonomie und

Statistik 1935
,

Miller, Ruth, "Women in Law: a question of changing society's views of

women's role and the profession's needs ", The Times, 1 January,
1973

Petzina, Dietmar, "Die Mobilisierung deutscher Arbeitskräfte vor und

während des Zweiten Weltkrieges ", Vierteljahrshefte fur
Zeit Beschichte, 1970

Rich, B., "Civil Liberties in Germany ", Political Science Quarterly, 1950
 434.

Schuster, E., "The German Civil Code (1) ", Law Quarterly Review, 1896

Wintz, H., "Die Frau und das Rauchen ", Schriften des "Verein
Deutsche Volksheilkunde e.V. ", Nuremberg, 1938

Zodrow, Leo, "Die Doppelbelastung der Frau in Familie und Erwerbsberuf ",
Stimmen der Zeit, vol. 171, 1962 -63

2) unsigned

"Abtreibung: Massenmord oder Privatsache ? ", Der Spiegel, 21 May, 1973.

"Aufhebung der Gesetze über die Gemeinschaftserziehung an häheren

Schulen (usw) ", Sachsisches Gesetzblatt, 9 October, 1933

"Aus der Rede vom Marie Juchacz als erste deutsche weibliche
Abgeordnete, 11.2.1919 ", Vorwärts, 14 November, 1968

"Bekanntmachung von 3.7.35 ", Amtsblatt des Bayerischen Staatsministerium

für Unterricht und Kultus, no. IX 27 409

"BevMlkerungspolitik ", Die Deutsche Sozialpolitik, July 1944

"Internationaler Kongress für Bevölkerungswissenschaft ", Der

Öffentliche Gesundheitsdienst, 5 December, 1935

"München: Kampferin gegen den Krieg ", Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15 September,

1966

"Planmassiger Kampf gegen Würdelosigkeit im weiblichen Geschlecht,

von einem Beobachter am Wege ", Frankfurter Zeitgemasse Broschüren,
January 1916

"Rechtsentwicklung", Jahrbuch des Deutschen Rechts, 1934

4. Dissertations

Ahrens, Hermann, "Untersuchungen zur Soziologie der Familie in

systematischer Absicht ", Rostock University, 1931

Brunn-Schulte Wissing, Josef, "Die Frühgeburten - ihr Lebensschicksal

in den ersten zehn Tagen und ihre bevölkerungspolitische
Bedeutung ", Rostock University, 1937
Frau in den
Eggener, Elfriede, "Die organische Eingliederung der
University, 1938
nationalsozialistischen Staat ", Leipzig
 435.

Evans, Richard J., "The Women's Movement in Germany, 1890- 1919 ",
Oxford University, 1972

Farrensteiner, Egon, "Schwangerenfürsorge und Geburt ", Rostock

University, 1939

Freising, Hans, "Enstehung und Aufbau des Arbeitsdienstes im

Deutschen Reich ", Rostock University, 1937

Grasshoff, Karl Heinz, "Das Schicksal der häuslichen Frühgeburten

und ihre bevölkerungspolitische Bedeutung ", Rostock University,
1937

Mason, T. W., "National Socialist Policies towards the German Working

Classes, 1925 -39 ", Oxford University, 1971

Meister, Angela, "Die deutsche Industriearbeiterin ", Munich University,

1938

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Alexander, G. G. L., Kämpfende Frauen, n.p., 1924

Alexander, Thomas and Parker, Beryl, The New Education in the German
Republic, London, 1930

Allen, William Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power, London, 1966

Anthony, Katharine, Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia, New York,

1915

Bade, Wilfrid, Der Weg des Dritten Reiches, Lübeck, 4 vols., 1933,
1934, 1935, 1936

Baumgart, Gertrud, Frauenbewegung Gestern und Heute, Heidelberg, 1933

Beckmann, Emmy (ed.), Des Lebens wie der Liebe Band, Tübingen, 1956
(letters of Gertrud Bäumer)

Boberach, Heinz (ed.), Meldungen aus dem Reich, Munich, 1968

Bolte, K. M. and Kappe, Dieter, Struktur und Entwicklung der

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Browning, Hilda, Women under Fascism and Communism, London, 1935

 436.
Bry, Gerhard, Wages in Germany 1871 -1945, Princeton, 1960

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1943

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Dent, H. C., The Education Act, 1944, London, 1964

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Darstellungen zur Geschichte dein Parlamentarischen Vertretung
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1933

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Würzburg, 1962

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 437.
Fainsod, Merle, How Russia is Ruled, London, 1963

Fest, Joachim C., Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches. Profile einer
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Fraenkel, Heinrich, German People versus Hitler, London, 1940

Franz Willing, Georg, Die Hitler -Bewegung: Der Ursprung 1919 -22,
Hamburg and Berlin, 1962

Gamm, Hans -Jochen, Der Flüsterwitz im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1966

Gersdorff, Ursula von, Frauen im Kriegsdienst, Stuttgart, 1969

Glass, David V., Population Policies and Movements, London, 1940

Goldmann, Franz, and Grotjahn Alfred, The German Sickness Insurance

Rinds, ILO Studies and Reports, Series M, no. 8, Geneva, 1928

Gottschewski, Lydia, Mannerbund und Frauenfrage, Munich, 1934

Greiff, M. (ed.), Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, Berlin and Leipzig, 1930

Grunberger, Richard, A Social History of the Third Reich, London, 1971

Halle, Fannina, Woman in Soviet Russia, London, 1933

Halperin, S. W., Mussolini and Italian Fascism, New York, 1964

Hasselblatt, Dora (ed.), Wir Frauen und die Nationale Bewegung,

Hamburg, 1933

Haupt, Joachim, Neuordnung im Schulwesen und Hochschulwesen, Berlin,

1933

Hellpach, Willy, Die Wesensgestalt der deutschen Schule, Leipzig, 1926

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Geschichte des N. -s. vornehmlich im Raum Mainz -Koblenz - Trier,
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Hiller, Friedrich (ed.), Deutsche Erziehung im neuen Staat, Langensalza,

1934

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 438.
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1930

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 440.

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1949

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 441.

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 442.

Glossary and List of

Abbreviations used in the Text and in Footnotes

ADGB Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (General

German Trade Union Association), trade union
combine associated with the SPD

ADLV Allgemeiner Deutscher Lehrerinnenverein (General

Union of German Women Teachers)

AfB Archiv fUr Bevölkerungspolitik, Sexualethik und

Familienkunde (periodical)

AfFr Archiv für Frauenkunde und Eugenetik (periodical)

AMSO Arbeitsgemeinschaft marxistischer Sozialarbeiter

(Association of Marxist Social Workers), affiliate
of the KPD

ANSt Arbeitsgemeinschaft nationalsozialistischer Studentinnen

(Association of National Socialist Girl Students)

AOPG Akten des Obersten Parteigerichts (Proceedings of the

NSDAP's High Court), found in the Berlin Document
Center

ARSO Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialpolitischer Organisationen

(Association of Social Policy Organisations), affiliate
of the KPD

BA Bundesarchiv, Koblenz

BDC Berlin Document Center

BDF Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Federation of German

Women's Associations)

BdM (BDM) Bund deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls)

branch of the Hitler Youth for girls aged from 14
to 18 or 21

BF Die Bayerische Frau (women's magazine)

BKL Bund Königin Luise (Queen Luise League), conservative

women's organisation

BziL Bericht zur innenpolitischen Lage (early name for the

reports of Himmler's security agents)

DAF Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front)

DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party -

Staatspartei)
from 1930, German State Party, as Deutsche
 443.

DFO Deutscher Frauenorden (German Women's Order), the

first Nazi women's organisation, founded and led
by Elsbeth Zander

DFW Deutsches Frauenwerk (German Women's Work), the

Nazi -led national organisation for women in the
Third Reich

DMäd Deutsche Mädchenbildung (periodical)

DNVP Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German Nationalist

People's Party)

Doppelverdiener the second earner in a family, generally used to

describe a working married woman

DS Der Deutsche Student (periodical)

DVP Deutsche Volkspartei (German People's Party)

DWEuV Deutsche Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung

(periodical), the Reich Ministry of Education's
gazette

FiS Die Frau im Staat (periodical), radical feminist

magazine

FK Frauenkultur im Deutschen Frauenwerk (periodical),

official magazine of the DFW

FZ Frankfurter Zeitung (newspaper)

Gau. administrative unit, most often applied to a province

of the NSDAP's organisation. There were 32 Gaue of
the NSDAP in 1933, and 40 in the Greater German Reich
of 1939

HA NSDAP Hauptarchiv

IfZ Institut für Zeitgeschichte Archiv

ILO International Labour Organisation

ILR International Labour Review (periodical)

Informations- Informationsdienst für die soziale Arbeit der NSV

dienst... (found in BA, NSD 30/1836)

JADG Jahrbuch des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes

(periodical)

Kl.Erw. Kleine Erwerbungen (small collections), catalogue

description in BA, under which Gertrud Bäumer's
letters are found
 444.
KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German
Communist Party)

Kreis district -- administrative unit of the NSDAP into

which the Gaue were divided

Machttibernahme the "takeover of power" by the Nazis, generally

referring to Hitler's appointment as Chancellor
on 30 January, 1933, and on the whole preferred
by the Nazis to the term "Machtergreifung ", the
"seizure of power"

MadR Meldungen aus dem Reich (reports of Himmler's

security agents throughout Germany, from late
1939)

n.d. date of publication not given

n.p. place of publication not given

NSBO Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation

(National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation)

NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei

(National Socialist German Workers' Party -
the Nazi Party)

NSDStB Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund

(National Socialist Students' Association)

NSF Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft (National

Socialist Women's Organisation)

NSLR Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (National

Socialist Teachers' League)

NSRB Nationalsozialistischer Rechtswahrerbund (National

Socialist Lawyers' League), formerly the Bund
Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Juristen - name
changed in 1936

NSV Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (National

Socialist People's Welfare), the national welfare
organisation in the Third Reich

ODI Open Door International for the Emancipation of the

Woman Worker (radical feminist organisation)

Ortsgruppe local branch of the NSDAP, the subdivision of the Kreis

RAB Reichsarbeitsblatt (periodical), the Reich Ministry of

Labour's gazette
 445.
RDB Reichsbund der Deutschen Beamten (National Association
of German Civil Servants), the only civil servants'
union in the Third Reich

RdK Reichsbund der Kinderreichen Deutschlands zum Schutz

der Familie (pro- natalist national organisation of
large families, founded in 1923 and taken over by
the Nazis)

Reichsfrauen- National Women's Leader, the title conferred on

führerin Gertrud Scholtz -Klink in November 1934

RGB Reichsgesetzblatt (periodical), official publication

of German federal statutes and decrees

RGO Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts-Opposition (Revolutionary

Trade Union Opposition), Communist trade union group,
founded in 1929

RMdI/NsdL Nachrichtensammelstelle im Reichsministerium des

Innern an die Nachrichtenstellen der Lander, the
confidential reports made by the Reich Ministry of
the Interior to the Land information offices about
KPD activities, 1931-33, found in the BA, R58 files

SA Sturm Abteilungen (Nazi storm troopers)

Slg.Sch. Schumacher Sammlung (collection of documents about

Nazi organisations and projects, found in BA and
BDC)

SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social

Democratic Party)
i
SS Schutzstaffeln (Nazi elite bodyguard formations, under
the leadership of Heinrich Himmler)

St.D.R, Statistik des Deutschen Reiches (periodical)

St.J. Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich (periodical)

VB Völkischer Beobachter (official Nazi Party newspaper)

VDEL Verein Deutscher Evangelischer Lehrerinnen (Union of

German Evangelical Women Teachers)

VjfZ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (periodical)

VkdL Verein katholischer deutscher Lehrerinnen (Union of

Catholic German Women Teachers)

WILPF Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

(founded at The Hague, 1915)

WuS Wirtschaft und Statistik (periodical)